i 






ill 



mmm 



iJWJi'l m«IC( or 



Author 




Title 



Imprint 



16—47372-3 



i 

m 

I 



I. 



^>»»»s-c«c-c-^^ 



^DEDICATED TO THD 






^y 



>*y 



©TK^ 



m 






HE 
HE 



GRAND ARMY OE 
REPUBLIC AND 
SONS OF VETERANS 

AND TO riY con- 

RADES IN THE FIE 



1861 



D 
1866 



^>)-)-)->M«(«H^ 





I 



.>i«MIM«ii;!{99«t« 





Bng.-Gciil., U. V. A., U. S. A. 



THE 



Grand Army Button 



A SOUVENIR 



Dedicated to " My Comrades," the Grand Army of the Republic 
AND THE Sons of Veterans, of the United States 



/ 

BY / 

NELSON MONROE 



REMINISCENCES OF THE DAYS OF DARK SECESSION 
i86i AND 1865 



■ And we recognize this Button wheresoever it may be, 
as a badge of glory won." 



BOSTON 
Rockwell and Churchill Press 

1893 









CONTENTS. 



Preface .... 

The Grand Ar.mv Button 

Introduction . 

Abraham Lincoln . 

Ulysses Simpson Grant . 

William Tecumseh Sherman 

Philip Henrv Sheridan . 

Lee's Surrender 

Review of the War 

LiBBY Prison 

"The Dead Line" at Libby Prison 



3 
6 

7 

13 
18 
21 

23 
28 

35 
61 

6? 



COPTRIGHT, 1893, BY NELSON MONBOB. 




PREFACE 



T^HIS little book, which is presented to the public, is designed to 
keep the hearts of the people warm and grateful toward the noble 
defenders of the Union and freedom, who in so many weary and bloody 
struggles have upheld the nation's flag, the nation's honor, and the 
nation's life ; of the life of our noble men whose trials and hardships in 
prisons and prison pens, and triumphs of the volunteer on many bloody 
fields of battle, whose immortal valor and patience have done the work 
and paid the price of liberty and peace. 
Therefore, 



^ For what he was, and what he dared, remember him to-day." 



The Grand army Button. 



Yet, perhaps, should you now observe him closely you will perceive his 
enthusiasm" increasing faster even than his strength. 

He is on the enemy's side of the river. Now for strict guard duty ! Now 
for the lonely picket amid the thickets where men are killed by ambushed 
foes! How the eye and the ear and — may I say it? — the heart are 
quickened in these new and trying vigils ! Before long, however, the 
soldier is inured to these things. 

He becomes familiar with every stump, tree, and pathway of approach, 
and his trusty gun and stouter heart defy any secret foe. 

Presently you find him on the road to battle. The hot weather of July, 
the usual load, the superadded twenty extra rounds of cartridges and three 
days' rations strung to his neck, and the long, weary march, quite exhaust 
his strength during the first day. He aches to leave the ranks and rest; 
but no, no ! He did not leave home for the ignominious name of " strag- 
gler" and " skulker." Cost what it may, he toils on. 

The Acotink, the Cub Run, the never-to-be-forgotten Bull Run, are 
passed. Here, of a sudden, strange and terrible sounds strike upon his 
ear and bear down upon his heart: the booming of shotted cannon; the 
screeching of bursted shell through the heated air, and the zip, zip, zip of 
smaller balls. Everything produces a singular effect upon him. Again, 
all at once, he is thrown quite unprepared upon a new and trying experi- 
ence ; for now he meets the groaning ambulance and the bloody stretcher. 

He meets limping, armless, legless, disfigured, wounded men. To the 
right of him and to the left of him are the lifeless forms of the slain. 
Suddenly a large iron missile of death strikes close beside him and ex- 
plodes, sending out twenty or more jagged fragments, which remorselessly 
maim or kill five or six of his mates before they have had the opportunity 
to strike one blow for their country. His face is now very pale ; and will 
not the American soldier flinch and turnback? There is a stone wall, there 
is a building, there is a stack of hay. It is so easy to hide ! But no! He 
will not be a coward. " O God, support and strengthen me! " 'Tis all his 
prayer. Soon he is at work. Yonder is the foe. " Load and fire ! " «» Load 
and fire!" But the cry comes, "Our flank is turned!" "Our men re- 
treat ! " With tears pouring down his cheek, he slowly yields and joins 
the retiring throng. Without any more nerve and little strength, he 
struggles back from a lost field. Now he drinks the dregs of suffering. 
Without blanket for the night, without food, without hope, it is no won- 
der that a panic seizes him, and he runs demoralized away. This disrep- 
utable course, however, is only temporary. 

The soldier before long forgets his defeat and his sufferings, brightens 



INTRODUCTION. 



up his armor, and resumes his place on the defensive line. He submits 
for weary days to discipline, drill, and hard fare ; he wades through the 
snows of winter and the deep mud of a Virginia spring. He sleeps upon 
the ground, upon the deck of a transport steamer, and upon the floor of a 
platform car. 

He helps load and unload stores ; he makes facines and gabions ; he 
corduroys quicksands and bridges, creeks and bogs. Night and day he 
digs or watches in the trenches. What a world of new experience ! What 
peculiar labor and suffering he passes through the soldier alone can tell 
you. He now marches hurriedly to his second battle ; soon after he is in 
a series of them. Fight and fall back ; fight and fall back ! O those days 
of hopelessness, sorrow, toil, and emaciation ! How vividly the living 
soldier remembers them — those days when he cried from the bottom of 
his heart, " O God, how long ! how long ! "' 

Would you have patience to follow him through the commingling dis- 
asters, from the battle of Cedar Mountain to the same old Bull Run, 
}ou would emerge with him from the chaos and behold his glistening 
bayonet again on the successful field of Antietam, where a glimmer of 
hope lighted up his heart. Would you go with him to the bloody fields 
of Fredericksburg, stanch his wounds in the wilderness of Chancellors- 
ville, and journey on with him afterward to this hallowed ground of 
Gettysburg, and could you be enabled to read and record his toils, his 
sufferings, and all his thoughts, you might be able to appreciate the true 
American soldier. You might then recite the first chapter of the cost of 
the preservation of the American Union. In September, 1863, after the 
battle of Gettysburg, the government sends two army corps to reinforce 
our brethren in the West. The soldier is already far from home and 
friends, but he is suddenly apprised that he must go two thousands miles 
farther. He cannot visit his family to take leave of them. He has 
scarcely the opportunity of writing a line of farewell. The chances of 
death are multitudinous as they appear before his imagination, and the 
hope of returning is very slender. Yet again the soldier does not falter. 
With forty others he crowds into the close unventilated freight-car, and 
speeds away, night and day, without even the luxury of a decent seat. 
With all the peculiar discomforts of this journey, the backings, and the 
waitings at the railroad junctions, the transfers from car to car and from 
train to train, being confined for days without the solace and strength 
derived from his coffee, there is yet something compensative in the exhila- 
rating influence of change. And there is added to it, in passing through 
Ohio and Indiana, a renewed inspiration, as the people turn out in masses 



10 The Grand army Button. 



to welcome him and to bid him godspeed ; and little girls throw wreaths 
of riowers round his neck, kiss his bronzed cheek, and strew his car with 
other offerings of love and devotion. Such impressions as were here 
received were never etTaced. They touch the rough heart anew with ten- 
derness, and, being a reminder of the old home affections, only serve to 
deepen, his resolution sooner or later, by tlie blessing of God, to reach 
the goal of his ambition ; that is to say, with his compatriots to secure to 
his children, and to other children, enduring peace, with liberty and an 
undivided country. He passes on through Kentucky, through the battle- 
fields of Tennessee, already historical. The names Nashville, Stone 
River, Murfreesboro, and Tullahoma remind him of past struggles, and 
portend future conflicts. He is deposited at Bridgeport, Ala., a house- 
less, cheerless, chilly place on the banks of the Tennessee, possess- 
ing no interest further than that furnished by the railroad bridge destroyed 
and the yet remaining rubbish and filth of an enemy's camp. Before many 
days the soldier threads his way up the valley of the great river, which 
winds and twists amid the rugged mountains, till he finds himself beneath 
the rock-crowned steeps of Lookout. Flash after flash, volume after 
volume of light-colored smoke, and peal on peal of cannon, the crash- 
ing sound of shot and the screaming of shell, are the ominous signs of 
unfriendly welcome sent forth to meet him from this rocky height. Yet 
on he marches, in spite of threatening danger, in spite of the ambush 
along the route, until he has joined hands with his Western brother, who 
had come from Chattanooga to meet and to greet him. This is where the 
valley of Lookout joins that of the Tennessee. At this place the stories 
of Eastern and Western hardship, suffering, battling, and danger are re- 
capitulated and made to blend into the common history and the common 
sacrifice of the American soldier. 

Were there time, 1 would gladly take you, step by step, with the soldier, 
as he bridges and crosses the broad and the rapid river, as he ascends 
and storms the height of Mission Ridge, or as lie plants his victorious feet, 
waves his banner, and flashes his gun on the top of Lookout Mountain. 
I would carry ynu with him across the death-bearing streams of Cliicka- 
mauga. I would have you follow liim in his weary, Ijarefooted, wintry 
march to the relief of Knoxville and back to Chattanooga. From his 
point of view I would open up the spring campaign, where the great gen- 
eral initiated his remarkable work of genius and daring. I could point 
you to the soldier pursuing his enemy into the strongholds of Dalton, 
behind the stern, impassable features of Rocky Face. Resaca, Adairs- 
ville, Cassville, Dallas, New Hope Church, Pickett's Hill, Pine Top, 



INTRODUCTION. H 



Lost Mountain, Kenesaw, Culps' Farm, Smyrna, Camp Ground, Peach 
Tree Creek, Atlanta, front so many points of view, and Jonesboro, are 
names of battle-fields upon each of which a soldier's memory dwells. For 
upward of a hundred days, he scarcely rested from the conflict. He skir- 
mished over rocks, hills, and mountains ; through mud, streams, and 
forests. For hundreds of miles he gave his aid to dig that endless chain 
of intrenchments which compassed every one of the enerny's fortified 
positions. He companied with those who combated the obstinate foe, 
on the front and on the flanks of those mountain fastnesses which the 
enemy had deemed impregnable, and he had a right at last to echo the 
sentiment of his indefatigable leader, " Atlanta is ours, and fairly won ! " 

Could you now have patience to turn back with him and fight tiiese 
battles over again, behold his communications cut, his railroad destroyed 
for miles and miles; enter the bloody fight of Allatoona ; follow him 
through the forced marches, via Rome, Ga., away back to Resaca, and 
through the obstructed gaps of the mountains of Alabama, — you would 
thank God for giving him a stout heart and an unflinching faith in a just 
and noble cause. Weary and worn, he reposes at Atlanta on his return 
but one single night, when he commences the memorable march toward 
Savannah. The soldier has become a veteran ; he can march all day 
with his musket, his knapsack, his cartridge-box, his haversack and can- 
teen, upon his person ; his muscles have become large and rigid, so that 
what was once extremely difficult he now accomplishes with graceful ease. 
This fact must be borne in mind when studying the soldier's marches 
through Georgia and the Carolinas. The enemy burned every bridge 
across stream after stream ; the rivers bordered the swamps ; for example, 
the Ocmulgee, the Oconee, and the Ogeechee were defended at every 
crossing. That they were passed at all by our forces is due to the cheer- 
ful, fearless, indomitable private soldier. O that you had seen him, as I 
have done, wading creeks a half a mile in width, and water waist deep, 
under fire, pressing on through wide swamps, without one faltering step, 
charging in line upon the most formidable works, which were well 
defended. You could then appreciate him and wliat he has accomplished, 
as I do. You could then feel the poignant sorrow that I always did feel 
when I saw him fall bleeding to the earth. 

I must now leave the soldier to tell his own tale among tlie people : of 
his bold, bloody work at McAllister against the torpedoes, abattis, artil- 
lery, and musketry; of his privations at Savannah; of his struggles 
through the swamps, quicksands, and over the broad rivers of the Caro- 
linas ; of the fights, fires, explosions, doubts, and triumphs suggested by 



12 The Grand army Button. 



Griswoldville, Rivers' and Binnaker"s Bridges, Orangcl^urg, Congaree 
Creek, Columbia, Cheraw, Fayetteville, Averysboro, and Bentonville. 1 
will leave him to tell how his hopes brightened at the reunion at Golds- 
boro ; how his heart throbbed with gratitude and joy as the wires con- 
firmed the rumored news of Lee's defeat, so soon to be followed by the 
capture of the enemy's capital and his entire army. I will leave him to 
tell to yourselves and your children how he felt and acted, how proud 
was his bearing, how elastic his step, as he marched in review before the 
President of the United States at Washington. I would do the soldier 
injustice not to say that there was one thing wanting to make his satisfac- 
tion complete, and that was the sight of the tall form of Abraham Lin- 
coln, and the absence of that bitter recollection, which he could not 
altogether exclude from his heart, that he had died by the hand of a traitor 
assassin. 

I have given you only glimpses of the American soldier as I have seen 
him. To feel the full force of what he has done and suffered, you should 
have accompanied him for the last four years ; you should have stood 
upon the battle-fields during and after the struggle ; and you should have 
completed your observation in the army hospitals, and upon the countless 
grounds peopled with the dead. The maimed bodies, the multitude of 
graves, the historic fields, the monumental stones, after all, are only 
meagre memorials of the soldier's work. God grant that what he planted, 
nourished, and has now preserved by his blood — I mean American liberty 
— may be a plant dear to us as the apple of the eye, and that its growth 
may not be hindered till its roots are firmly set in every State of this 
Union, and till the full fruition of its blessed fruit is realized by men of 
every name, color, and description in this broad land. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 13 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, sixteenth President of the United States, and at 
the time of his death filling that office for the second term, was born 
in Hardin County, Kentucky, Feb. 12, 1809. His ancestors were 
Quakers. In 1816 his father removed to Spencer County, Indiana, and 
Abraham was thus early put to work with an axe to clear away the forest. 
In the next ten years he received about one year's schooling, in such 
schools as were taught in that new country. 

At the age of nineteen years he made a trjp to New Orleans as a hired 
hand on a flat-boat. In March, 1830, he removed with his father to 
Decatur, 111., and aided in building a cabin, settling the family in their new 
home, and providing for them the ensuing winter. In 183 1 he again 
made a trip to New Orleans, and on his return became a clerk in a store 
at Sangamon, 111.' 

In 1832 he volunteered in the Black Hawk War, and was made captain 
of a company, but saw no fighting. On his return from the campaign he 
was a candidate for the Legislature, but was unsuccessful. A store which 
he purchased did not prosper; and after a short term of service as post- 
master at New Salem, 111., studying at every leisure moment, he became 
a surveyor, and won a good reputation for the accuracy of his surveys. 

In 1834 he was elected to the Legislature, and reelected in 1836 and 
1838. Having devoted all his leisure time to the study of law, he was ad- 
mitted to the bar in 1836, and in 1837 removed to Springfield, 111., and 
opened an office in partnership with Hon. John F. Stuart. He soon rose 
to eminence in his profession, but did not withdraw from politics. In 
1844 he was nominated as a Whig presidential elector, and canvassed the 
State for Mr. Clay. 

In 1846 he was elected to Congress from the central district of Illinois, 
and in Congress maintained the reputationof an honest and able represent- 
ative, acting generally with the more advanced wing of the Whig party. 
In 1849 lis was a candidate for United States Senator, but the Legislature 



14 The Grand army Button. 



was Democratic, and elected General Shields. In 1854 the passage of the 
Nebraska Bill and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise called him again 
into the field, and by his disinterested labors Judge Trumbull was elected 
to the United States Senate. In 1856, at the Republican National Conven- 
tion, he was urged for the vice-presidency, and received one hundred and ten 
votes. In 1S58 he was nominated for United States Senator by the Repul)- 
licans, and in company with Judge Douglas, the Democratic candidate, can- 
vassed the State, discussing with his antagonist the great principles which 
distinguished the two parties. Lincoln had a majority of the popular vote, but 
Douglas was elected by the Legislature by eight majority. On the i8th of 
May, i860, Mr. Lincoln was nominated by the Republican National Con- 
vention at Chicago for the presidency, and on the 6th of February following 
was elected, receiving one hundred and eighty out of three hundred and 
three electoral votes. It was the policy of those who were conspiring 
against the Union to divide the opponents of Mr. Lincoln as far as pos- 
sible, in order that he might succeed by the votes of Northern States alone, 
and thus afford a pretext for secession ; and therefore three other distinct 
presidential tickets were run, headed respectively by Messrs. Breckenridge, 
Douglas, and Bell. 

As soon as his election was known, measures were taken by political 
leaders in several of the Southern States to drag their States into 
secession; and wlien Mr. Lincoln left Springfield, 111., on the iitli of 
February, to go to Washington for his inauguration, six States had al- 
ready .seceded, and others were preparing to follow. A Southern con- 
federacy had been formed, with Davis and Stephens for president and 
vice-president. Notwithstanding three or more attempts to assassinate 
him, he reached Washington in safety, and, though still threatened, was 
inaugurated March 4, 1861. The condition of the government, through 
the imbecility, fraud, and treason of tiie preceding administration and 
cabinet, was deplorable : its credit nearly ruined ; its army deprived of 
arms and paroled; its navy sent to distant seas; its arms removed to the 
arsenals of the States in insurrection, or sold and broken up; its forts, 
vessels, custom-houses, and mints .seized by the conspirators. 

Mr. Lincoln set himself to remedy this, when, on the 14th of April, 1861, 
Fort Sumter was captured and the war commenced. He then called for 
seventy-five thousand men for three months, proclaimed a blockade of the 
Southern ports, and summoned an extra session of Congress for July 4, 
1861. Large armies were soon required, and in the executive responsi- 
bilities of his position in a time of war, with a great army to be maintained, 
disciplined, and kept at work, finances to be managed, the disloyal gov- 




^^y^/^'^L^''^^<:^c7-t^ 



16 " TnH Grand army Button. 



ernment officers, civil and military, to l)c weeded out, the schemes of 
secessionists to be thwarted, and later in tiie year tlie ditticult case of the 
seizure of ^lason and Slideil to be adjusted, he had his full share of the 
burdens of his official position. During 1862. these were rather increased 
than diminished. 

Compelled by his convictions of duty to assume in fact his titular posi- 
tion of commander-in-chief of the army and navy, he ordered an advance in 
February, 1862, which was made in March. The indecisive or disastrous 
battles of the Peninsula and Pope's campaign caused him great anxiety, 
and the conviction having been forced upon him, by the course of events, 
that the slaves in the rebel States must be emancipated as a military 
necessity, he issued, on the 22d of September, soon after the more favor- 
able battles of South Mountain and Antietam, his preliminary proclama- 
tion, announcing his intention of declaring free all slaves in rebel States, 
on the 1st of January, 1863. Several successes in the West had cheered 
him, and in 1863, with some disasters, there were many and important 
victories East and West. Mr. Lincoln had been very desirous that the 
border States should adopt some plan ol more or less gradual emancipa- 
tion, and, during the year, West Virginia, Maryland, and Missouri did so. 

In 1864, having called General Grant to the lieutenant-generalship, Mr. 
Lincoln divided with him a part of his burdens, which had become too 
oppressive to be borne. A great outcry had i)een made against him for 
the arrest of Vallandigham and other promoters of rebellion ; but in two 
very able letters, addressed to the New York and Ohio committees, he fully 
justific^d his course. 

The victories of Sherman, Thomas, Farragut, Terry, and Sheridan, and 
the persistency and resolution of Grant, had at length, in the spring o^ 
1865, prepared the way for the downfall of the rebellion ; and after a brief 
but desperate struggle, Petersburg and Richmond fell, and Lee sur- 
rendered his army. In the progress of these events, Mr. Lincoln, whose 
anxiety had been most insupportable, was at the front, and the day after 
the occupation of Richmond by the Union troops he entered that city, 
not with the pomp of a conqueror, but quietly and without display, and 
after spending one day there returned to City Point, and tlu'nce to Wash- 
ington. The war was to all intents and purposes closed, and, with his mind 
intent on tlie great problem of pacification, his brow cleared, and he ap- 
peared in better spirits than usual. This was the time seized upon l)y the 
conspirators for his assassination, and on the 15th of April, just four years 
from the date of his proclamation calling the people to arms, he died by 
the hand of a wretched murderer. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 17 



He was a man of thorough integrity and uprightness, conscientious, 
candid, amiable, and forgiving; slow in arriving at conclusions, 
but firni in maintaining them ; of sound judgment and good execu- 
tive abilities, and possessing a rare power of natural logic which was 
the more convincing from its singularity. Though sprung from the 
common people and never ashamed of the class, he possessed a native 
politeness and grace of manner which caused Edward Everett, himself 
one of the most refined and elegant gentlemen of our time, to say that in 
his personal bearing and manner Mr. Lincoln was the peer of any gentle- 
man of America or Europe. 




"cy^ ^/^^^^ ^^^^^:y^ 



Ulysses Simpson grant. id 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT, Lieutenant-General, United States 
Army, was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, O., April 
27, 1822. After a fair preliminary education, he entered West 
Point in 1839, and graduated in 1843, ranking twenty-first in a class of 
thirty. Brevetted second lieutenant. Fourth Infantry, he served first at 
Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis ; next on the Red River in Louisiana. 
In 1845 made full second lieutenant in his regiment, and in 1846, under 
General Taylor, moved forward to the border, took part in the battles of 
Palo Alto, Reseca de la Palma, in the storming of Monterey and the 
capture of Vera Cruz ; appointed quartermaster of his regiment ; took 
part in the assault of Molinodel Rey and the storming of Chapultepec, 
and was made first lieutenant on the spot and subsequently brevetted 
captain. In August, 1848, married Miss Dent of St. Louis, and ordered 
successively to Detroit, Sackett's Harbor, and Fort Dallas, Oregon. 
Promoted to full captaincy in August, 1853 ; resigned his commission 
July 31, 1854. He engaged in various occupations, but with no great 
success, as farmer, collector, auctioneer, and leather-dealer. On the 
opening of the war he raised a company and marched with it to Spring- 
field, 111., from Galena, his then residence. Other men of more imposing 
appearance obtained commissions, but Captain Grant received none. 
Soon after, however, Governor Gates made him adjutant-general, and in 
June commissioned him as colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers. 
His regiment was employed in guarding the Hannibal and St. Joseph 
Railroad. Here he was soon made acting brigadier-general, and on the 
9th of August commissioned as brigadier-general and ordered to southern 
Missouri to oppose Jefferson Thompson. He next took command of the 
district of Cairo, occupied Paducah and Smithland, Ky., and sent an ex- 
pedition in pursuit of Jefterson Thompson. On November 7 fought the 
battle of Belmont. Early in January made a reconnoissance in force into 
Kentucky to learn the position of the enemy, and in the beginning of 
February moved on Fort Henry, Tenn., which, however, Flag-Officer 
Foote captured before he reached it. He then besieged Fort Donelson, 
on the Cumberland, and after four days received — Feb. 16, 1862 — its un- 



20 The Grand Army button. 



conditional surrender. Promoted to a major-generalship Feb. i6, 1862. 
Moving southward through Nashville, Franklin, Columbia, etc., he 
reached Pittsburg Landing and Savannah, on the Tennessee River, the 
latter part of Alarcli ; fought the severe battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg 
Landing April 6 and 7 ; under command of General Halleck took part 
in the siege of Corinth, After its evacuation, put in command of the 
Department of West Tennessee ; broke up the illicit traffic at Memphis ; 
commanded in the battles of Luka and Corinth September and October, 
1862; moved southward to attack Vicksburg in rear, in December, 1862, 
but was recalled by the capture of Holly Springs, his depot of supplies. 
Returned northward, and bringing his army to Young's Point sought the 
reduction of Vicksburg by various measures. Finally marching his force 
down the west side of the river, crossed at Bruinsburg; fought in the 
first seventeen days of May the battles of Fort Gibson, Fourteen Mile Run, 
Raymond, Jackson, Champion's Hill, and Black River Bridge ; besieged 
Vicksburg for seven weeks, when it surrendered — by far the richest prize 
of the war thus far; defeating and routing Johnston at Jackson with 
Sherman's troops, he next visited New Orleans, where he was seriously 
injured by being thrown from his horse. 

Appointed in October, 1863, to the command of the Western Grand 
Military Division, he hastened to Chattanooga, where by the magnificent 
battles of Chattanooga he surpassed his previous reputation. He also 
raised the siege of Knoxville. Appointed lieutenant-general in March, 
1864, he reorganized the Eastern armies, and in May, 1864, commenced 
his great campaign, and fought within the next weeks the terrible battles 
of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Court House, the North Anna, Cold 
Harbor, Mechanicsville, Chickahominy, and Petersburg; later in the 
season, the disastrous battle of the Petersburg Mine, the battles of Deep 
Bottom and Chaffin's Farm, several attempts to gain possession of the 
South Side Railroad occasioning battles southwest of Petersburg, the 
battles of Hatchers Run, in October, 1864, and February, 1865. The re- 
pulse of the attack on Fort Stedman and the final movement by which 
Five Forks was taken, and the strong works before Petersburg carried, 
Richmond and Petersburg captured, the retreating rebel army pursued, 
fought at Deatonville, Farmville, and Appomattox Station, and finally 
compelled to surrender, demonstrated his ability and persistence. At the 
same time he had directed in general the movements of Sherman, Sheri- 
dan, and Thomas, and in particular the expeditions for the capture of Fort 
Fisher and the reduction of Wilmington. He also dictated the terms of 
the subsequent surrender, and the reorganization of (he greatly reduced 
army. 



I 



WILLIA.W TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 21 



WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 



WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN, Major General, United States 
Army, was born in Lancaster, O., Feb. 8, 1820. After a good 
preliminary education he entered West Point in 1836, and gradu- 
ated in 1840, sixth in his class ; appointed immediately second lieutenant 
Third Artillery, and served successively in Florida (where, in 1841, he was 
promoted to be first lieutenant). Fort Moulton (i 841-6), in California 
(1846-50), where he was made assistant adjutant-general, brevetted 
captain, and in 1850 promoted to a captaincy, and ordered to St. Louis. 
In 185 1 he was stationed at New Orleans. In 1853 he resigned his com- 
mission, removed to San Francisco, and was for four years manager of 
Lucas Turner & Co.'s banking-house. In 1857 he was offered the presi- 
dency of a State military academy in Louisiana, and accepted, but resigned 
in January, 1861, because the academy was used to train rebel officers, and 
removed to St. Louis, and at the opening of the war offered his services 
to the government. He was appointed, May 14, 1861, colonel of the 
Thirteenth Infantry, United States Army, and commanded the Third Brig- 
ade in the First (Tyler's) Division at Bull Run, where neither he nor his 
men ran, but rendered efficient service. He was made brigadier-general of 
volunteers Aug. 3, I861, reported at first to General Anderson, and on Gen- 
eral Anderson's resigning (October 8) was made commander of the Depart- 
ment of the Ohio. Here he was greatly embarrassed by the utter insufficiency 
of the force allowed him to meet the rebels, who greatly outnumbered his 
forces. Finding remonstrances useless, he asked to be relieved, and was 
shelved by being put in command of Benton Barracks near St. Louis. 
General Halleck found him here, and presently put him in command of the 
Fifth Division of Grant's Army. At Shiloh General Grant testifies that 
he saved the army and the day. He was in the advance in the pursuit and 
siege of Corinth, and was made major-general of volunteers from May i, 
1862. June 20 he captured Holly Springs, Miss. In June he was put in 
command of the district of Memphis, and suppressed the contraband trade 



22 The Grand army Button. 



and the guerrillas there. In December he was appointed to the command 
of the Fifteenth Army Corps, and sent to Chickasaw IJlufifs, Vicksburg, 
where, owing to Grant's inability to cooperate, in consequence of the 
capture of Holly Springs by the rebels, he was repulsed with considerable 
loss. He then proceeded with his command and General McClunand, 
who ranked him to Arkansas Post, which was captured early in January, 
1863. In Grant's subsequent campaign against Vicksburg, Sherman was 
his ablest lieutenant. He saved the gunboats from destruction on the 
Sunflower River, made so formidable a demonstration against Haines's 
Bluff, when Grant was at JJruinsburg, as to completely deceive the rebels 
and draw them away from his route ; fought bravely at Fourteen Mile 
Creek and Jackson, destroyed rebel property there, and thence moved 
rapidly toward Vicksburg; captured the rebel batteries on Haines, Wal- 
nut, Snyder, and Chickasaw Bluffs, and then opened communication with 
the Union fleet above Vicksburg. He assaulted the city on the 19th and 
22d of May, and gained some ground, though he did not enter the city. 
Immediately after the surrender in July, he was sent in pursuit of Johnston, 
whom he drove back through and out of Jackson with heavy loss. 

After a short period of rest, he was called to reinforce the Army of the 
Cumberland at Chattanooga, and while on his way was put in command 
of the Army of the Tennessee, General Grant, who had formerly com- 
manded it, being promoted to the command of the Military Division of 
the Mississippi. Arriving at Chattanooga, he was at once ordered to 
move to the attack of the rebels at the northern extremity of Missouri 
Bridge. He crossed the Tennessee, and, by his persistent demonstrations 
on Fort Buckner, compelled the rebels to withdraw their troops from 
Fort Bragg ta oppose him, and then that fort fell a prey to the assault of the 
Fourth Corps. This battle over, he was immediately sent by General Grant 
to raise the siege of Knoxville, which he accomplished by an extraordi- 
nary forced march. After a brief period of rest, early in February General 
Sherman was at Vicksburg, at the head of twenty thousand troops, march- 
ing into the heart of Mississippi and Alabama. On his return Grant was 
lieutenant-general, and Sherman again succeeded him in the command of 
the Military Division of tlie Mississii)pi. Gathering his troops, he moved 
from Chattanooga May 7, 1864, for Atlanta, capturing in the campaign 
Dalton, Resaca, Kingston, Rome, Dallas, Allatoona Pass, Marietta, 
Sandtown, and Decatur, besides many places of less note, and fighting 
the severe battles of Rocky-Faced Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, 
Dallas, Kenesaw Mountain, Little Kenesaw, the three battles before At- 
lanta, and the battles at Jonesboro. He entered Atlanta September i, 




^ 




WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 



24 The Grand army button. 



removed tlie civilians from it, and gathered stores there ; and Hood, the 
rebel general, attempting to cut his communications, he followed him 
northward, fought him at Allatoona Pass, drove him westward to Gayles- 
ville, Ala., and intrusted the task of taking care of him to General 
Thomas while he returned to Atlanta, voluntarily severed all communica- 
tion with Chattanooga, destroyed the public buildings of Atlanta, and with 
a force of sixt\- thousand men commenced his march toward Savannah 
Sweeping through a broad tract, he arrived at Savannah with very slight 
loss, capturing Fort McAllister byassault, and compelling Hardee to evac- 
uate the city. He remained there a month, recruiting and setting matters 
in order, and with a force of nearly eighty thousand moved northward tow- 
ard Goldsboro, N.C. On his route he captured Orangeburg, Columbia, 
and Winnsboro, S.C., compelled the rebels to evacuate Charleston, took 
Cheraw and Fayetteville, and entered Goldsboro on the 24th of March, 
having fought two battles at Averysboro and Bentonville, the latter one of 
considerable severity. Remaining seventeen days at Goldsboro to reclothe 
and refit his army, he moved, April 10, on Smithfield, and thence to 
Raleigh and westward. Receiving overtures for surrender from Johnston, 
he made a memorandum of an agreement with him, which, being unsatis- 
factory to the government, was annulled, and on the 26th of April John- 
ston surrendered on the same terms on whicli Lee had done. 

The war ended. General Sherman was put at the head of one of the 
five great military divisions, that of the Mississippi, embracing the North- 
western States and territories, Missouri, and Arkansas. 



Philip Henry Sheridan. 25 



PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN. 



PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN, Major-General, United States Army, 
was born in Perry County, Ohio, in 1831. He had the adv^antages 
of a good common-school education, and was appointed to a cadet- 
ship at West Point in 1S48, and graduated in 1853, very low in his class, 
his belligerent disposition reducing his standing in his studies, which was 
otherwise above the average. 

He was attached to the First United States Infantry as a brevet second 
lieutenant, and ordered to Fort Duncan, Texas. In the spring of 1835 he 
was transferred to the Fourth Infantry as full second lieutenant, and 
ordered to San Francisco, via New York. In the latter city, he was for 
two months in command of Fort Wood. For six months he remained 
on the Pacific coast, and among the Indian tribes, whose confidence he 
had won, and whom he could manage better than any other officer. 

He was promoted to a first lieutenancy in the winter of 186 r, and when 
the war broke out, to a captaincy in the Thirteenth Infantry, United 
States Army, and ordered to join his regiment at Jefferson Barracks, near 
St. Louis. He was made acting chief quartermaster under General Custis, 
but succeeded indiff"erently. During the Pea Ridge campaign, he was 
ordered by General Blunt to impress a large amount of provender from the 
citizens of Arkansas, and, refusing, was put under arrest, and ordered to 
report to General Halleck, who relieved him from arrest, made him his 
own chief quartermaster, and presently allowed him to accept a commis- 
sion of colonel of a Michigan cavalry regiment. 

On the 14th of July, 1862, with his regiment, he fought and defeated a 
rebel brigade of cavalry, for which he was made brigadier-general ot vol- 
unteers, his commission dating from July i, 1862; but his command was 
infantry, not cavalry, to which he was best adapted. 

Not to speak of some Union engagements in which Sheridan acquitted 
himself well, he held the key of the Union position at Perryville Octo- 
ber 8, and saved the Union Army from defeat. In the battle of Stone 
River his division fought with the utmost desperation, losing all the 
brigade commanders, seventy officers, and half tlie men, and finally tell 



26 THE GRAND AF^WY BUTTON. 



back in good order with empty cartridge-boxes, but, reforming, fought 
through the remaining days of the battle. At Chickamauga, on the first 
day, he prevented a serious disaster to Wood's corps ; and on the second 
day, though driven from the field by the sudden assault of the enemy 
upon the gap in the Union lines, he fought his way out, and, reforming 
his men, brought his division into line before midnight. 

At Chattanooga, his bravery and daring were conspicuous in the attack 
upon Fort Bragg. His horse was shot under him, and the men under his 
leadership were almost frantic with excitement. He followed Sherman to 
Knoxville, to raise the siege of that city ; and when General Grant be- 
came lieutenant-general, he was ordered to the Army of the Potomac, to 
the command of the Cavalry Corps. In this congenial position he led 
several expeditions into the enemy's country, where he manifested the 
utmost daring and skill. 

In August, at General Grant's request, he was appointed to the com- 
mand of the Middle Military Division. Here he had for his task the 
keeping of the rebel General Early in order. After several minor skir- 
mishes, he defeated him severely on the 19th of September, near Win- 
chester; again on the 22d at Fisher's Hill; routed and drove him back 
on the 8th and 12th of October; and on the 19th of October, at ]\Iiddle- 
town, turned what had been, in his absence, a sad and disastrous defeat 
of his troops into a magnificent victory. In the next three or four 
months he desolated the Shenandoah \'alley and smaller valleys adjacent, 
that they might no longer serve as harboring-places for guerrillas; and in 
March, 1865, descended the valley, captured Staunton and Waynesboro, 
routed Early once more, and destroyed the railroads and canals and other 
property, to the value of over fifty millions of dollars. Marching by way 
of White House, he joined General Grant's army, and after two days' 
rest was ordered to the field in the last campaign, where to his bravery 
and strategic skill was mainly due the caj^ture of Five Forks and the pur- 
suit and eventual surrender of Lee. 

After the war on the Atlantic coast was over, he was sent, in command 
of a force of over eighty thousand men, to Te.xas ; and Kirby Smith hav- 
ing surrendered, after a few weeks' guarding of the border he was allowed 
to reduce his army. On the 27th of June he was appointed commander 
of the Military Division of the Gulf, comprising the department of Mis- 
sissippi, Louisiana, Texas, and l^'lorida. 

In 1869 General Sheridan was promoted to lieutenant-general, vice 
Sherman, promoted to the rank of general, joositions which both these 
soldiers filled entirely to the satisfaction of the whole country. 









'■V 




^-. ... 


il 




^ 


Jj^^^^^ 


L^I^ft- 


^^p%.; 



PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN. 



28 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



LEE'S SURRENDER, 



APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE, VIRGINIA, APRIL 9, 1865. 



AI50UT April i, 1865, the confederate forces under General Lee were 
totally routed and flying before Grant's army ; victory and peace 
seemed very near, and General Grant wrote the following letter 
to Lee : 

Farmville, Va., April 7, 1S65. 

Genkral : The results of the last week must convince you of the hope- 
lessness of further resistance on the part of the army of northern Virginia 
in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from 
myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you 
the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States Army known as 
the army of northern Virginia. 

U. S. GRANT, 

LicutouDit-general. 

Lee had been counseled by his own officers to surrender. He hesitated 
to acquiesce in their advice, saying, " 1 Iiave too many brave uilmi. The 
time has not yet come to surrender."' Still he reislicd to (jnint's letter on 
the evening of the .same day : 

General : I have received your note of this day. Though not entirely 
of the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the 
part of the army of northern Virginia, I appreciate your desire to avoid 
useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposi- 
tion, ask the terms you will offer on condition of the surrender. 

Gen. R. E. LEE. 






\, . A 











;u) The Grand army button. 



This note was placed in General (Grant's hands on the morning of the 
8th. while lie was still at Farniville. He immediately replied : 

Gexekai. : Your note of last evening in reply to mine of the same date, 
asking the conditions on which 1 will accept the surrender of the army of 
northern V^irginia, is just received. In reply I would say that, peace being 
my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon ; namely, 
that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualitied for taking up 
arms against the government of the United States until properly ex- 
changed. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any officers 
you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for 
the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender 
of the army of northern Virginia will be received. 

U. S. GRANT, 

Lieutoiant-general. 

Meanwhile the Union army kept on in its pursuit, and the fighting con- 
tinued. Early on the 8th, Grant set out from Farmville to join Sheridan's 
advance. He had been absent from his own headquarters several days, 
and, worn out with anxiety and fatigue, loss of sleep, and the weight of 
responsibility, he became very unwell, and was obliged to halt at a farm- 
house on the road. While here he received about midnight another letter 
from Lee. 

April 8. 

I received at a late hour your note to-day. In mine of jesterday I did 
not intend to propose the surrender of the army of northern Virginia, but 
to ask the terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not think the 
emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army, but as the res- 
toration of peace should be tiie sole object of all, I desired to know 
w^hetiier your proposals would lead to that end. I cannot, therefore, meet 
you with a view to surrender the army of northern Virginia; but as far as 
your proposal may affect the Confederate States forces under my command, 
I should be pleased to meet you at lo A.M. to-morrow on the old stage- 
road to Richmond, between the jiicket lines of the two armies. 

R. K. LEK. 

This letter was thoroughly disingenuous and unworthy of Lee. On the 
other hand, (irant in reply used direct language and meant what he said. 
He wrote, on the morning of llie 9th of .April : 



LEE'S Surrender. 31 



General : Your note of yesterday is received. I have no authority to 
treat on the subject of peace. The meeting proposed at lo A.M. to-day 
could lead to no good. I will state, however, that I am equally desirous 
for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same feeling. 
The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the 
South laying down their arms, they would hasten that most desirable event, 
save thousands of human lives, and hundreds of millions of property not 
yet destroyed. Seriously hoping that all our difficulties may be settled 
without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, etc., 

U. S. GRANT. 

Liejiteuant-general. 

Lee received Grant's letter on the morning of the 9th, and at once 
replied : 

General : I received your note of this morning on the picket line, 
whither I had come to meet you, and ascertain definitely what terms 
were embraced in your proposal of yesterday with reference to the sur- 
render of this army. I now ask an interview, in accordance with the offer 
contained in your letter of yesterday, for that purpose. 

R. E. LEE. 

This communication did not reach Grant until about noon. He im- 
mediately returned answer : 

General: Your note of this date is but this moment (11.50 A. I\L) 
received, in consequence of my having passed from the Richmond and 
Lynchburgh roads to the Farmville and Lynchburgh road. I am at this 
Wiiting about four miles west of Walkin Church, and will push forward 
to the front for the purpose of meeting you. Notice sent to me on this 
road where you wish the interview to take place will meet me. 

U. S. GRANT. 

On receipt of this note Lee rode to the village of Appomattox, and 
selected the house of a farmer named McLean for his interview witli 
Grant. Grant having received information of Lee's waiting at the farm- 
house, at once proceeded to the interview. The house was a very plain 
building, with a verandah. Grant was conducted through a narrow hall 
into a small parlor containing a centre table, one or two small stands, a 
sofa, and two or three chairs. Lee was accompanied by his military secre- 
tary and chief-of-staff, Col. Charles Marshall. The two great commanders 



Thh Grand ar.wy button. 



shook hands heartily, and had scarcely taken their seats when their first 
words were interrupted by the entrance of the Union officers. 

General Grant had not personally met General Lee since the two were 
in Mexico together, the latter then on the staflf. of Scott, the former a 
subaltern. The conversation naturally hinged at first upon these old recol- 
lections. Then there was a slight pause, which was broken by General 
Lee, who said : "I asked to see you, general, to find out upon what terms 
you would receive the surrender of my army." 

General Grant thought a moment and replied: "My terms are these: 
All officers and men must become prisoners of war, giving up, of course, 
all weapons, munitions, and supplies. But a parole will be accepted, 
binding officers and men to go to their homes and remain there until 
exchanged, or released by proper authority." 

Lee responded to this with a remark not exactly pertinent to the oc- 
casion ; whereupon Grant continued, asking : 

" Dp I understand. General Lee, that you accept these terms? "'' 

"Yes," replied Lee, faltering. " If you will put them in writing, I will 
put my signature to them." 

General Grant, without saying more, again took seat at the table, and 
wrote the following : 

Appomattox Court House, 

V'iRGiNiA, April 9, 1865. 

General : In accordance with tlie substance of my letter to you of 
the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the army of northern 
Virginia on the following terms, to wit : Rolls of all the officers and men 
to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be desig- 
nated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you 
may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take 
up arms against the government of the United States until properly ex- 
changed, and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole 
for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public property 
to be packed and stacked, and turned over to the officers appointed by me 
to receive them. This will not embrace the side arms of the officers, nor 
their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will 
be allowed to return to his home, not to ha disturbed by the United States 
authorities so long as they observe their ])aroles and tlie laws in force 
where they may reside. 

U. S. GRAiNT, 

Lieutenant-general. 



LEE'S Surrender. 33 



While Grant was penning these words he chanced to look up, and his 
eyes fell upon General Lee's sword. He paused tor a moment, his mind 
conceived a new thought, and he inserted in the document the provision 
that "This will not embrace the sitle arms of the officers, nor their private 
horses or baggage." 

General Lee read what Grant had written. He was touched by the 
clemency of the victorious commander, and on laying down the paper 
said simply, in a husky tone of voice, " ALagnanimous, generaL" But he 
essayed to gain a few points, and remarked : " The horses of my cavalry 
and artillery, general, are the property of the soldiers. It is, I hope, 
within the terms that they shall retain their property." 

" It is not within the terms," replied General Grant. 

Lee glanced at the paper again and then said, "No. You are right. , 
The terms do not allow it." 

" And now," said Grant, " I believe the war is over, and that the sur- 
render of this army will be followed soon by that of all the others. I 
know that the men, and, indeed, the whole South, are impoverished. I 
will not change the terms of the surrender. General Lee, but I will in- 
struct my officers who receive the paroles to allow the cavalry and artillery 
to retain their horses, and take them home to work their little farms." 

" Such an act on your part, general," replied Lee, " will have the best 
effect in the South." 

He then sat down and wrote out the following letter: 

Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia, 

April 9, 1865. 

General : 1 received your letter of this date containing the terms ot 
the surrender of the army of northern Virginia as proposed by you. As 
they are. substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 
8th inst , they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper 
officers to carry the stipulations into effect. 

R. E. LEE, 

GeneraL 
Lieut. -GEN. U. S. Grant. 

General Grant returned to his headquarters, where the firing of salutes 
welcomed him. He gave orders to have it stopped at once. 

"The war is over," he said; "the rebels are our countrymen again, 
and the best sign of rejoicing will be to abstain from all demonstrations 
in the field." 



a-i The Grand army Button. 



He dismounted Ijy the roadside, sat down on a stone, and called for 
pencil and paper. An aide-de-camp offered him his order book, taking 
which, he wrote : 

Hon. 1-. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Washington : 

General Lee surrendered the army of northern \'irginia this afternoon, 
on terms proposed by myself. The accompanying additional correspond- 
ence will show the condition fully. 

U. S. GRANT, 

Lieutenant-general. 

And thus Grant announced to the government the end of the great 
rebellion. 

From the War Department, 

Washington, D.C, April 9, 1865. 

Lieutenant-general Grant : Thanks be to Almighty God for 
the great victory with which He has this day crowned you and the gallant 
armies under your command. The thanks of this department, and of the 
government and of the people of the United States, their reverence and 
honor, have been deserved, and will be rendered to you and the brave and 
gallant officers and soldiers of your army, for all time. 

EDWIN ^L STANTON, 

Secretary of JJ^ar. 

And thus with the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the 
Confederate Army, to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the United 
States Army, came the end of this unholy rebellion. 



REVIEW OF THE WAR, 



THE war which commenced in the spring of 1861, and was maintained 
for four years with a violence and intensity hardly equalled in mod- 
ern history, was not, on the part of the South, a sudden uprising, 
the resilience of a brave and generous people, goaded at last to resistance 
after years of oppression and wrong, and without previous preparation 
seizing on such weapons as were available to throw off the hated yoke. 
On the contrary, it was but the fulfilment of a long-cherished purpose. 
Thirty years before, South Carolina had revolted; and though partly 
coaxed and partly awed into submission at that time, the political leaders 
of that and other Southern States had never ceased to threaten secession 
whenever their demands had been refused in the National Legislature ; 
and from the presidential campaign of 1856 they had made active prepara- 
tions to consummate their purpose at the next presidential election. 

In the cabinet of Mr. Buchanan they had their pliant tools to furnish 
from the nation's resources the means of destroying the nation's life ; and 
while one had quietly sent to the States which were to rise in rebellion 
the arms and ammunition intended for the nation's defence, till seven 
hundred and seven thousand stand of arms had been placed in the South- 
ern arsenals, another had sent all the ships of the navy, except a mere 
handful, to distant seas for long cruises, and another had so depreciated 
the credit of the Republic that its bonds, which in 1857 stood at a pre- 
mium of seventeen per cent., had, in a time of profound peace, fallen to 
eighty-five per cent., and even at this price no large sums could be placed. 
The Indian agencies had been given over to plunderers until the natives 
were exasperated and ready to rise and massacre the whites. Abroad, 
several of the more important missions and consulships were filled by men 
hostile to the nation's existence. And in the army and navy all the 
officers from the South and many of those from the North had been. tam- 
pered with, and urged by the strongest inducements to abandon the cause 
of their country. What, then, were the causes which led to the rebellion? 
They were mainly : 



36 The Grand army button. 



I. An entire difference of opinion in regard to the fundamental princi- 
ples of government, arising from the different social and economical con- 
ditions of society North and South. The men of the North were the 
descendants, for the most part, of the middle class of English yeomen. 
Sturdy, self-reliant, not averse to labor, but enterprising and intelligent, 
they had maintained commerce, established manufactories, fostered the 
mechanic arts, and developed, by high and scientific culture, the agricultu- 
ral wealth of their region. They had organized free schools over their 
entire territory ; reared academies, colleges, and universities of the highest 
character, and planted their churches over the entire region. With them 
labor was honorable, and the hard hand of the son of toil more welcome 
than the lily fingers of the children of indolence. The men of the South 
were descended in almost equal numbers from the profligate and vicious 
younger sons of the English aristocracy of two centuries ago and the con- 
victs who were sent over, to the number of more than a hundred thousand 
while Virginia and Maryland were penal colonies, with a small infusion of 
Huguenots in South Carolina, and a considerable number of French Creoles 
in Louisiana. Naturally averse to labor, they had, early in their history, 
commenced the importation of African slaves, and, under the stimulus of 
the profit to be derived from the culture of cotton, had laid out the South- 
' ern States in large plantations, often of many thousand acres, which were 
cultivated by slave labor, while the proprietors of the plantations and 
slaves led an easy and luxurious life. There was little commerce, and of 
that little nineteen-twentieths was conducted by Northern men. The man- 
ufactures were very few, and, for the most part, only of the rudest kind — 
coarse burlaps, negro cloth, the simpler agricultural implements, etc., 
while the great bulk of needful articles, either for war or peace, were 
brought from the North. The mechanic arts did not flourish, for it was 
not respectable to be a mechanic. Agriculture on an extended scale, 
though prosecuted with the rudest implements and in the most slovenly 
manner, was the only avocation which was popular ; and at this the slaves 
were, except in the mountainous districts, the only toilers. All the whites 
were not planters, and as most of those who possessed neither plantations 
nor slaves were in abject poverty, and the system of large plantations ren- 
dered good free schools impossible, there grew up a class of poor, degraded 
whites, ignorant, depraved, and vicious, hating the negro intensely, and 
often inferior to him in intelligence. The slave system of agriculture was 
proverbially wasteful and destructive ; and the rich and fertile lands of the 
South, after a few years of the reckless and superficial cultivation bestowed 
u])on them, became barren, and the slaveholders emigrated to newer lands 



Review of the War. 37 



to ruin them in the same way. There was thus a constant demand for new 
territory, to be sacrificed to the slave-holders ; and as the large planters 
were often men of intelligence, and resolute in their defence of the princi- 
ples of their caste, and could readily obtain seats in Congress, they were 
determined to secure for themselves and their fellow-planters the right of 
taking their slaves to any portion of the new territories, and bringing 
them under the influence of slavery. 

2. The State Rights doctrine, first broached by Thomas Jefferson and 
James Madison in 1798, amplified and enlarged by John C. Calhoun in 
1832 and 1833, and finally fully adopted by the principal Southern leaders 
between 1850 and i860, was another cause of the rebellion. The advo- 
cates of this doctrine insisted upon the supremacy of the State in all mat- 
ters. The Union was, they said, only a confederation of States, with but 
feeble powers, and when the sovereign States saw fit to secede from it 
they had a perfect right to do so. This right was to be exercised when- 
ever the majority in Congress or the States should adopt any measure by 
which a sovereign State should feel or fancy itself aggrieved. 

3. But slavery, directly or indirectly, was the proximate cause of the 
war. The North, with its regard for free and honorable labor, felt an ab- 
horrence for slavery ; and the poor bondman flying from its torments, its 
indignities, and its vicious indulgence was reluctantly sent back into its 
vortex, and often succeeded in effecting his escape. To sacrifice to such 
a system the virgin soil of the new territories seemed a crime against 
nature, and claiming an equal right to the fair lands, as yet unsettled, 
with the South, the citizens of the North refused to sanction slavery in 
any region beyond that already yielded by past compromises. On the 
other hand, the Southern leaders, accustomed to control Congress by 
their demands or threats, sought the permission to make slave territory 
of all the region west of Missouri, the recovery of their slaves everywhere 
in the United States, and the right to take them where they pleased with- 
out incurring risk of loss. They claimed also the right of reopening the 
slave-trade, and of maintaining the interstate slave-trade. 

They saw, however, with serious apprehension, that in each succes- 
sive Congress their power, hitherto enforced by haughty threats and the 
crack of the slave-driver's whip, was waning, as new Western States were 
admitted, and the opposition to slavery and slave-holding aggression 
became stronger and more effectually organized. In 1856 this opposition 
first excited their alarm. John C. Fremont, the candidate of the Re- 
publican Party for president, and the representative of the men who 
were hostile to any farther aggressions of the slave power, polled a very 



38 The Grand army button. 



heavy vote ; and, though defeated, Iiis party evidently possessed strength 
enough to succeed next time. 

The slave-holding leaders at once took measures, quietly, to thwart 
such a result if it should happen. Many of them were not averse to a 
disruption of the Union, if only they might make suitable preparation for 
it beforehand ; and while, as we have said, the cabinet of Mr. Buchanan 
lent themselves willingly to the plans of the conspirators, measures were 
taken in other quarters to provide for the coming emergency. Military 
schools for the training of officers were established in many of the South- 
ern States, and superintended by eminent graduates of West Point ; South 
Carolina imported large quantities of arms and munitions of war from 
England. The railroads and telegraph lines through the South, built 
mostly with Northern capital, were pushed forward with great rapidity ; 
and at length, so confident were the arch conspirators of success, and that 
with but moderate resistance, that they purposely incited divisions in the 
Democratic party, and other opponents of the Republican party, wliich, 
by the nomination of three other candidates for the presidency, should 
insure the success of the Republican nominee. This accomplished, their 
orators, by the most vehement denunciation of Mr. Lincoln and the North, 
sought to " fire the Southern heart" and prepare the excitable masses for 
the tragedy of secession. The people of the North, meantime, except 
those who were in the secret of the conspirators, sturdily refused to believe 
that the South intended to secede or fight. They had so often heard 
threats of secession from Southern leaders that the cry of '-Wolf! 
Wolf!" had lost its terrors. The day of election came, and Mr. Lincoln 
was elected by a large majority of the electoral college and a plurality of 
the popular vote. Within four days after the election, South Carolina had 
called a secession convention, and on the 17th of December passed an 
ordinance of secession ; Mississippi imitated her example on the 9th of 
January; Florida on the loth; Alabama on the lith; Georgia on the 
19th ; and Louisiana on tiie 25th ; while Texas followed on the 7th of 
February. The election of Mr. Lincoln was the occasion, but in no sense 
the cause, of secession. Seven of the seceding States had passed the 
ordinance before he had left his home in Illinois to come to Washington 
to take the oath of ofiice. The Senate and the Supreme Court of the 
United States were both opposed to him politically, and the House had 
but a small majority in his favor. There were not wanting those who 
hoped that by yielding to the demands of the Southern leaders, making 
conce.ssions and compromises as in the jjast, war might yet be averted, 
and the " erring sisters come back in peace." A peace conference was 



r 



Review of the War. 39 



accordingly assembled in Washington on tiie 4th of February, 1861. 
Delegates were present from twenty States, and various measures were 
discussed. A majority finally united in a series of propositions which 
gave no satisfaction to any party, and were rejected by both. 

Mr. Crittenden offered in Congress a series of compromise resolutions, 
which after long discussion and numerous modifications were finally 
rejected. At this juncture one of the leading conspirators, afterward 
president of the rebel confederacy, avowed that no propositions could 
be made which would be satisfactory to them ; that if offered carte-blanche 
to write their demands they would refuse it, as they were determined 
upon separation. 

Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated ; and before he and his cabinet had fairly 
learned the condition of the nation the conspirators precipitated the war 
upon the government. There was now no possibility of compromise or 
settlement. The war must be fought out till one or the other party 
should be ready to yield. How stood at this time the two opposing par- 
ties, the United States and the insurgents, as to their preparation for the 
conflict? The conspirators had thirty thousand men already under arms, 
and a hundred thousand more already called out and fast organizing for 
service. They had a moiety of the living graduates of West Point ready 
to take command of their armies, and the graduates of their half-dozen 
military schools for subordinate officers ; they had an ample supply of 
muskets and rifles and pistols from the United States armories, furnished 
by the fraud and treason of John B. Floyd ; and a large supply of cannon 
of all calibres in the arsenals, forts, and navy yards they had seized. 
The people, wrought up to frenzy by the harangues of the conspirators 
enlisted with great promptness ; and there was reason to fear that they 
would seize upon the capital and wreck the government before the slower 
North could put on its harness for the fight. 

But besides these advantages they had others of no mean importance. 
From the first it was evident that their fighting would, for the most part, 
be defensive, though with offensive returns. Adopting this mode of 
warfare, they reserved to themselves the great advantage of interior 
lines ; that is, supposing the two armies to occupy in their positions 
segments of two parallel circles, the outer segment and what was beyond 
it would represent the position of the union army, while the inner seg- 
ment and what was within it would exhibit the position of the rebel army. 
Of course troops, supplies, arms, and ammunition could be moved much 
more readily across the area included within the inner segment than 
around the outer one. 



40 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



Repudiating, either by State or individual action, tiie payment of the 
debts due tiie North, and having on hand the greater part of the cotton- 
crop of iS6o, which as rapidly as ])ossible was shipped to Europe as the 
basis of exchange, they were supplied at the beginning with considerable 
resources for carrying on the war. 

Furthermore, the war would be fought on their own territory, and every 
white inhabitant, whether combatant or non-combatant, would be of 
service to their cause. Women as well as men could be spies and scouts; 
the weak, by wrong information to the enemy, by constant correspondence 
with their own leaders, and in a thousand other ways, could serve their 
cause as well as the strong. 

They had, moreover, able officers, whom thev at once put at the head 
of aflfairs. Davis, whom they had already made president of their so- 
called confederacy, was a graduate of West Pi^int, had served with credit 
in the Mexican war, had been secretary of war under President Pierce, 
and possessed a high reputation for executive ability. Albert Sydney 
Johnston, an officer of high rank and superior talent; Joseph E. John- 
ston, hardly inferior to him in ability; Robert E. Lee, the friend and 
confidant of General Scott; G. T. Beauregard, an engineering officer of 
brilliant abilities; and Thomas J. Jackson, a stern Cromwellian sort of 
fighter, were all pledged to their service, together with numbers of others 
who were hardly inferior to these in military skill and knowledge. 

What had the North to oppose to such a state of preparation for the 
impending conflict? She had men — brave, noble-hearted, patriotic men, 
but they were all unskilled in the arts of war. She had some officers, but 
the lieutenant-general was old and feeble, suffering from wounds received 
fifty years before in his country's cause, and wholly unprepared for the 
emergencies of a war far vaster than he had ever dreamed of. His plans 
became, through the traitors among the officers of his military family, 
known to the enemy as soon as he had formed them, and the burden of 
responsibility became so great that he was fain to lay it down. Of the 
other generals of the regular army, Wool was nearly as infirm as his chief; 
Harney was hardly more than semi-loyal ; Twiggs, with a depth of treason 
and meanness which should make him forever infamous, had not only 
gone over to the rebels, but had betrayed the common soldiers of his com- 
mand to them, and made them prisoners, while A. S. Johnston had also 
joined the South. But two colonels, Mansfield and Sumner, were found 
loyal and capable of higher commands ; and while the number of officers 
of lower grade whose loyalty would bear the test was much larger, few 
of them had had much actual exj^erience of war, and they needed long 



Review of the War. 41 



training to enable them to comprehend fully the vast struggle on which 
they were about to enter. Many of the army officers who remained loyal 
were so affiliated with the South by marriage or friendship, or their obliga- 
tions to some of the Southern leaders, that they had hardly the heart to 
fight them, and desired to conduct the war on such principles that no one 
should be seriously hurt. The departments of government, the halls of 
Congress, the military offices, the president's house even, swarmed with 
spies, who communicated without delay to their Southern friends every 
incident or movement of importance. 

That the North, with its vast resources of patriotic men, its skilled 
labor, and its immense wealth, must eventually win the day was the con- 
fident belief of every loyal man ; but with the immediate advantages so 
greatly on the side of the South, it seemed to be evident that the struggle 
must be long and severe. Yet the president and his cabinet, hopeful in 
the midst of the surrounding gloom, thought the war would not continue 
" beyond ninety days." 

The president, by proclamation, on the 15th of April, 1861, called out 
seventy-five thousand militia to serve three months, and called for soldiers 
for the regular army, which should recruit its numbers to forty-two thou- 
sand. He also summoned Congress to an extra session on the 4th of July, 
and by another proclamation, of the 19th of April, declared the ports of 
the insurgent States under blockade. 

There were abundant volunteers to make up the seventy-five thousand 
men called for, three hundred and fit"ty thousand, it is said, having oftered 
their services, and eighty thousand having been accepted ; but very few, 
probably not twenty thousand in all, belonged to any militia organization 
at the time when the call was made. The skeleton militia regiments, 
where any such existed, filled up their ranks to the full required quota by 
recruiting, but in most of the States there was no effective military organi- 
zation. In the cities volunteer companies and regiments kept up the uni- 
form, though with but little of the discipline of the army; but in the rural 
districts, and in many entire States, there was no militia organization. 
Fifty years of peace had caused the nation to forget the needed prepara- 
tion for war. So strongly wedded was the secretary of war to the belief 
that the war was to be a brief one that he very reluctantly accepted a few 
additional regiments from the hundreds offered him, and suffered the re- 
mainder, after long waiting, to disband, disgusted with the neglect of the 
government to respond to their patriotic offers. 

Let us now glance at the conduct of the war thus inaugurated. The 
troops assembled around Washington — brave fellows enough, but utterly 



42 The Grand army Button. 



without discipline, except in the case of a very few regiments. The men, 
in many instances never having handled a musket before their enlistment, 
were hardly arrived in their camps before a cry was set up by the news- 
papers of, " On to Richmond ! " and the fiercest denunciations were 
heaped upon the administration and the veteran lieutenant-general, 
because he did not order an immediate advance. Meantime, though all 
possible expedition had been used, the regiments had hardly been formed 
into brigades, or the brigades into divisions. There was much to be 
learned in five or six weeks ; but the clamor arose so fiercely, "On to 
Richmond ! On to Richmond ! " that General Scott suffered himself to be 
over-persuaded, and ordered an advance when the troops were as yet 
wholly unprepared for it, though some of them were approaching the close 
of their very short term of enlistment. Then followed tl^ Ijattle of Bull 
Run. It is much to the credit of this undisciplined mass of militia that 
they should have fought so well as they did. The far better trained force 
of Beauregard was beaten back, and, but for the arrival of Johnston's- rein- 
forcements just at the last moment, would have given way, routed and 
utterly discomfited. But the evil eft'ects of the want of discipline showed 
themselves in the panic which affected the Union troops when their rein- 
forced foe began to rally and press them back. But not all mingled in 
this terrible panic ; a few regiments maintained their ground, and found 
that the rebels were too much exhausted and had suffered too heav\- losses 
to assume the offensive. 

The day seemed one of sad disaster, but it was a blessing in disguise. 
Rallying promptly from its deep humiliation, the nation saw the need of 
thorough discipline, of able leadership, of skilful strategy. Had the 
North been successful at Bull Run, the war would not yet be ended. 
After this battle. General McClellan, who had already won some distinction 
in West Virginia, became the actual, and in November following the titular, 
general-in-chief of the armies of the Union. At the West there were some 
movements worthy of notice. Captain Lyon, U.S.A., soon after brigadier- 
general of volunteers, held command in Missouri, where the governor, 
Claiborne F. Jackson, and Sterling Price, a former governor and then 
major-general of the Missouri State (kiard and president of tiie State 
(Convention, were endeavoring to compel the secession of the States. 

Removing the United States arms from St. Louis, and arresting a 
brigade of the State Guard under General Frost, who sought to seize St. 
Louis in the interests of the secessionists, General Lyon soon compelled 
Jackson, Price, and their adherents to fly westward, driving them from the 
capital, skirmishing with them at liooneviile, and finally pushing them to 



Review of the War. 43 



a point where the rebel general, McCulloch, brought up his forces to 
aid them. He fought and defeated them at Dug Spring on the 2d of 
August, 1861, and on the 9th of the same month, in the desperate and 
hard-fought battle of Wilson's Creek, he fell while leading his troops in a 
charge upon the enemy. His death temporarily disheartened his troops, 
who retreated to Rolla. A few days later, the rebels in large numbers 
besieged and finally captured Lexington, notwithstanding its gallant de- 
fence by Colonel Mulligan. Brigadier-General Grant, a name just begin- 
ning to come into notice, had been appointed commander of the District of 
Cairo, had thwarted the plans of the rebel general, Jefferson Thompson, in 
."(outh-eastern Missouri, occupied Paducah and Smithland, Ky., and early 
in November, after a careful reconnoissance, had attacked and captured 
the rebel camp at Belmont, and fought the bloody but indecisive battle at 
that point. 

The Army of the Potomac, now rapidly filling up its numbers under the 
requLsitions of the president, equipped, organized, and disciplined till it 
was one of the finest armies ever led into the field, whitened all the hills 
around Washington with its tents. These were the days of " anaconda" 
strategy. The rebellion was to be surrounded on all sides by our troops, 
and then, its boundaries being gradually diminished by our contracting 
lines, at the last the monster was to be crushed into one shapeless mass 
by the tightening fold of our armies. 

The plan is said to have been devised by General Scott, and to have 
been sanctioned and developed by General McClellan. It was very pretty, 
and lacked but one element of success — practicability. To have accom- 
plished it would have required at least .six millions of men and six billions 
of money, and even then some weak point would have been found by the 
enemy. In accordance with this theory, however, expeditions were fitted 
out for the capture of Forts Hatteras and Clark on the North Carolina 
coast, and of Forts Beauregard and Walker at Hilton Head, the keys to the 
fine harbor of Port Royal, and other enterprises were commenced looking 
to the reduction of Roanoke Island and Newbern, and the capture of New 
Orleans and its defences. The Hatteras and Hilton Head expeditions both 
came within the year 1861, and both were successful — the latter owing to 
the admirable arrangement of Flag-Officer (afterward Rear-Admiral) S. 
F. Dupont, proving one of the finest naval victories of the war. The 
war, on the ist of January, 1862, had raged for nearly nine months, and 
as yet had made but little impression upon the Southern confederacy. 
The Union flag floated indeed over a small portion of North and South 
Carolina ; Fort Pickens and Key West were ours ; Kentucky was driven 



•i-i The Grand army Button. 



from her position of neutrality, thoiisjh still at several points occupietl by 
the rebels; and Missouri was under Union rule, but sorely harassed by 
bands of rebel ruffians and guerrillas. The second year of the war was des- 
tined to see wider conquests, though not unmingled with serious reverses 
and disasters. One fold of the anaconda was sweeping southward froni 
St. Louis to the Alleghanies, where an army with its right and left wings 
three hundred miles asunder pressed the rebel forces before it. The 
Army of the Western Department, now under command of General 
Halleck, had its left wing in eastern Kentucky, where the sturdy Thomas 
swept steadily and grandly onward, defeated ZollicofFer at Camp Wildcat, 
killed him, and routed most completely his army at Somerset or Mill 
Spring, and then, his foe having disappeared, hastened to join the centre 
under Buell. Slow in movement, but an excellent disciplinarian, Buell 
with the centre had occupied a threatening position toward the rebel 
stronghold at Bowling Green, wliere Albert Sydney Johnston, the ablest 
of the rebel generals, had fortified himself with a large army. Westward 
still, Grant was moving along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, and 
preparing under General Halleck's directions one of those flanking move- 
ments which have since rendered him so famous, and by which he hoped 
ere long to render Columbus, Ky., — now strongly fortified and held by a 
large force under the Bishop-General Polk, — untenable and to compel 
Johnston to evacuate Bowling Green without a battle. The feat is soon 
accomplished. 

Fort Henry yields on the 6th of February to Flag-Officer Footers well- 
directed assault, and on the i6th of the same month Fort Donelson, after 
a bloody and desperate siege of four days, is " unconditionally surrendered " 
by General Buckncr to General Grant, and fourteen thousand prisoners 
grace the conqueror's triumph. Clarksville and Nashville were now at the 
mercy of the Union Army, and Johnston, marching rapidly from Bowling 
Green, passed through Nashville without stopping, and pushed on to the 
Mississippi line. While his colleague, the bishop-general, made the 
best of his way down the river to Island Number Ten, where in a strong 
position he could for the time defy his pursuers. Grant did not rest upon 
his laurels. Following his antagonist by way of the Tennessee River, 
he landed his troops at Pittsburg Landing, near Sliiloh Church, about 
twenty miles from Corinth, a place of great strategic importance, where 
Johnston was concentrating his forces. General Halleck had ordered 
I'iuell and Thomas, the former in advance, to join Grant at this point. 
The roads were heavy, and the progress of the troops slow. Johnston, a 
brilliant and skilful soldier, at once saw his opportunity and improved it. 



Review oh the War. 1.3 



His force, though perhaps not equal to Grant's and Buell's combined, was 
nearly double that of Grant, and by hurling them upon Grant before his 
reinforcements came up, he might be able to destroy his army and then 
to defeat Buell. But the deep mud delayed by a day or more his advance, 
and Buell was nearer than he supposed. Still, on the first day's attack 
(Sunday, April 6) the Union troops were in part surprised, and, till near 
the close of the day, defeated. The greater part of Prentiss' division with 
its commander were taken prisoners, and the entire army driven out of 
their camps and toward the river bank. Johnston, the rebel commander, 
was killed, and Beauregard took his place. Late in the afternoon the tide 
of battle began to change. The gunboats, coming within range of the 
enemy, opened upon them with their heavy shells, and Grant's chief 
of ordnance, gathering the scattered cannon, packed them on a command- 
ing position and commenced so deadly a bombardment at short range 
that the rebels began to fall back. The gunboats continued their bom- 
bardment through the night, and the morning bringing a part of Buell's 
force, the Union Army assumed the offensive, and by a little afternoon had 
driven back the rebels and regained the lost ground. The rebels retreated 
leisurely to Corinth, where they were pursued and besieged till the 30th of 
May, when Beauregard evacuated it and moved southward. 

The battle of Shiloh had been the bloodiest of the war thus far. The 
bishop-general did not find his stronghold of Island Number Ten im- 
pregnable. A canal was cut through a bayon on the west side of the 
river, by which the gunboats were able to attack it from below, and. New 
^ladrid having been captured by General Pope, the position of the rebels 
became precarious, and they flitted southward again, leaving, however, 
their heavy guns and a considerable number of prisoners. Fort Wright 
was their next halting-place, and ere long they were dispossessed of this, 
and Memphis was surrendered, the rebel fleet having first been destroyed 
in a short but sharp naval action. In Arkansas there had been some severe 
fighting ; the Missouri troops, pushing southward to keep up with the 
sweep of the "anaconda," had encountered the enemy in large force at 
Pea Ridge, and after a two days' fight, by the gallant conduct of General 
Sigel the Union ti'oops were victorious, and the rebels driven over the 
mountains. 

The expedition intended for the capture of New Orleans and its defences 
had wisely been placed under the command of that able and skilful officer 
Captain (now Vice-Admiral) Farragut, and the cooperating land-force 
under General Butler. Leaving Fortress Monroe in February, 1862, the 
expedition was delayed at Ship Island and other points for two months, 



41) THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



and it was not until the i8th of April that it approached Forts Jacl<son and 
St. Philip on the Mississippi, seventy miles below New Orleans. These 
forts were works of great strength, and had a large and effective arma- 
ment and full garrisons. To make assurance doubly sure, however, the 
rebels, to whom the possession of New Orleans was of the greatest im- 
portance, had provided against the possibility of a squadron passing the 
forts, by stretching a boom and chains across the river, by a large fleet of 
gunboats, ironclads, and rams, and by fireships and floating torpedoes 
which it was believed would destroy any vessels which might attempt the 
hazardous passage. For six days Flag-Officer Farragut bombarded the 
forts, and, tliough he succeeded in doing some damage, there was as yet 
no indication of their reduction. He had resolved before, if the bom- 
bardment proved imsuccessful. to attempt to force a passage past the 
forts and through the obstructions, and thus to reach New Orleans. 
The enterprise was one of great hazard. For a distance of nearly a mile 
his vessels would be exposed to the secret and terrible fire of the siege- 
guns of the forts; then the chain was to be forced, the fireships, the tor- 
pedoes, and the enemy's fleet, nearly equal in numbers to his own, and 
several of the vessels ironclad, to be encountered. On the 24th of April, 
aided, though some of the time embarrassed, by a fog, the effort was 
made, the fire of the forts was encountered without serious injury, the chain 
was broken, the fire-rafts and torpedoes destroyed with but slight dam- 
age, and the rebel fleet, after a fierce and desperate engagement almost 
unparalleled in the history of naval warfare, completely annihilated, thir- 
teen of their gunboats and the ironclad " Manassas" being either burned, 
sunk, or destroyed. Of his own squadron, one vessel had been sunk and 
three disabled. With the remainder he kept on his way up the river, and 
on the 26th summoned New Orleans to surrender. The rebel troops left 
the city in haste, and on the 28th it was occupied by Union troops. On 
the 29th of April the forts surrendered to Captain (now Rear-Admiral) 
Porter. Flag-Officer Farragut ascended the river, captured the forts on its 
bank near New Orleans after a brief bombardment, passed the batteries of 
V'icksburg, and communicated with Flag-Officer Davis, who had succeeded 
the gallant Foote in the command of the upper Mississippi squadron. 

On the Atlantic the "anaconda policy" had not worked so well. 
Burnside has, indeed, in a brilliant campaign, captured Roanoke Island, 
Plymouth, Newbern, Beaufort, and Fort Macon, N.C., and Gilmore had 
demonstrated the power of his long-range guns to reduce strong masonry 
fortifications, by the capture of Fort Pulaski. But in Virginia matters were 
not promising. 



Rtvitiw OF THE War. 47 



The Grand Army of the Potomac lay idly in its camps for four months 
after its organization was completed. Five and twenty or thirty miles 
away around the heights of Manassas, the rebel army, far inferior in num- 
bers, in equipments, in ordnance and supplies, had Iain through the long 
winter undisturbed. The new general had ever some excuse ready for 
declining to move. At length, tired of this constant procrastination, the 
president took the matter in hand, and issued orders for an advance on 
the enemy on the 22d of February. When at length the vast army moved 
forward, the enemy, weary of waiting, had abandoned their camps and 
moved southward. Marching back to the Potomac, McClellan embarked 
his main army on transports and sailed for Fortress Monroe. A consider- 
able garrison was left for Washington, a small force in the Shenandoah 
Valley under General Banks, and one corps under General McDowell sta- 
tioned near Fredericksburg. Meanwhile, the most remarkable naval con- 
flict of our times had taken place in Hampton Roads. The " Merrimac," 
one of our own frigates, partially burned at the abandonment of the Gos- 
port Navy Yard, had been raised by the rebels, repaired, and clad with 
railroad iron. On the 7th of March she came out of Norfolk, destroyed 
by her rain the " Congress" and " Cumberland," two Union frigates, and 
attempted to attack the " Minnesota," one of the Union ships of the line, 
but could not get at her in consequence of the low state of the tide, and 
during the night lay at anchor ready to renew the destruction of the pre- 
vious day. But during the night a singular-looking craft, appropriately 
enough described as resembling a cheese-box on a raft, entered the harbor, 
and the next morning advanced to give the iron-clad ship battle. In vain 
the latter exerted all her powers to destroy or escape her little antagonist ; 
impenetrable to her shots, she is yet nimble enough to sail round her, to 
throw her huge shells into her portholes whenever they are opened, and 
to cripple her steering-apparatus ; and at last the monster armored ship, 
seriously damaged and her commander dangerously wounded, withdrew 
from the conflict, and a few weeks later was blown up by the rebels to pre- 
vent her falling into the hands of the United States authorities. We left 
the Grand Army on its way to Fortress Monroe. Landing on the penin- 
sula, they soon made their way toward Yorktown, where the rebels, with 
less than twenty thousand men, occupied some hastily reared works. Gen- 
eral McClellan had over one hundred tliousand men, and could easily have 
carried these works by assault, but he preferred to institute a siege ; and 
General Lee, who was in command, having been largely reinforced, 
awaited an attack until the 3d of May, when he withdrew to Williamsburg. 
Hither McClellan followed, fought a battle in which for hours our men 



48 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



were slaughtered without definite object, and the next morning found that 
Lee had left Williamsburg and was moving leisurely toward Richmond. 
Thither McClellan pursued as leisurely, digging through the swamps, and 
losing more men from the deadly malaria of the Chickahominy marshes 
than he would have done in half a dozen battles. 

Slowly bridges were thrown across the Chickahominy and a single 
division sent across to occupy the ground. The rebels, fully informed of 
these movements, sent out a force from Richmond to overwhelm these few 
troops, while a rising flood in the Chickahominy would, they reasoned, 
prevent their reinforcement. On the first day the Union troops were 
defeated and driven back, but, receiving reinforcements, they took the 
offensive, and the next day drove the rebels back to within two miles of 
Richmond, and could have entered and captured that city had not 
McClellan recalled them. For the next twenty- five days General 
McClellan continued to fortify the banks of the Chickahominy, his men 
meantime falling victims to the malarial fever, till at one time he had 
nearly thirty thousand on his sick list — diversifying his lal^ors, meanwhile, 
by calling for more men. At this time he had one hundred and fifty-eight 
thousand men on his rolls, and one hundred and twenty thousand eti[ectives. 
He represented the rebels as having two hundred thousand men, and the 
addition of Jackson's corps, which could not, he said, now be prevented, 
would increase their force to two hundred and fifty thousand. In fact, 
the rebels had fifty thousand men, and when Jackson's corps was added, 
less than ninety thousand, and, until they had learned the character of 
their foe, were trembling with fear lest we should assault Richmond, which 
could not have been held against a resolute attack. After attempting in 
vain to throw all the blame of a defeat upon the president or Secretary 
Stanton, General McClellan fought two battles, in neither of which did he 
employ half his force, and resolved to change his base — or, in plain 
English, to raise the siege of Richmond and retreat. This retreat was 
conducted under the direct supervision of his subordinate generals, many 
of whom by their bravery under such adverse circumstances added to their 
reputation. He reached Harrison's Landing, fifteen miles from Richmond, 
with a loss in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers of nearly thirty 
thousand men. It would still have been possible to have captured Rich- 
mond had the Union commander attempted it in earnest, though the difii- 
culty of doing so was immensely increased from his present position ; but 
McClellan frittered away the summer in clamoring for more men, and 
refused to move without them. The new general-in-chief, General 
Halleck, at length recalled the troops to Alexandria and Acquia Creek, 



Review of the War. 49 



where they were tjreatly needed. McClellan protested, prayed, and urged 
further trial, and finding all of no avail, hnall}-, after a fortnight's delay, 
embarked. Matters were not progressing much more favorably in north- 
ern Virginia. General Banks, who had ventured up the Shenandoah 
Valley in April, driving the rebels before him, was suddenly confronted, 
early in May, by "Stonewall" Jackson's force, more than quadruple his 
own, and compelled to retreat, which he did with considerable skill, north 
of the Potomac. Fremont, now in command of the Mountain Department, 
and McDowell at Fredericksburg, were summoned to repel his invasion ; 
and his object (of drawing troops away which threatened Richmond from 
the North) having been accomplished, Jackson in return made a masterly 
retreat up the Shenandoah Valley, and, after fighting two battles at Cross 
Keys and PortRepublic, made his escape to Gordonsville, and thence, with 
largely recruited forces, to Richmond, where he arrived in season to harass 
McClellan's army in its retreat across the peninsula. 

It was now resolved to put Fremont's, Banks', and McDowell's com- 
mands together under General Pope, as the Army of Virginia, and, threat- 
ening Richmond from the north, so distract Lee's attention that it might 
fall an easy prey to McClellan's attack from the south. General Pope's 
plans were well arranged, and had he received the cooperation of the 
Army of the Potomac they could hardly have failed of success. General 
Pope had advanced toward Richmond, and had crossed the Rappahannock, 
when he found that Lee, disdaining to notice McClellan's presence at 
Harrison's Landing or convinced that he had nothing to fear from him, 
was moving with his whole army, numbering from ninety thousand to one 
hundred thousand men, upon him. Pope had but forty thousand men, 
and his only tactics were to fight and fall back till reinforcements could 
reach him which should make his force equal to that of his adversary. 
Retreating campaigns are, however, very generally fatal to the morals of 
an army, unless it is in the highest state of discipline, and it is greatly to 
General Pope's credit that, fighting at such odds and constantly falling 
back, unsupported to anything like the extent he should have been by the 
Army of the Potomac, his brave but half-starved army should have re- 
tained to the last its courage, its organization, and its splendid fighting- 
powers. The battles of this campaign extended from Cedar Mountain by 
way of Manassas and Centreville almost to the outer defences of Washing- 
ton itself, and when at last the army of Virginia joined their brethren of 
the Army of the Potomac within the fortifications around Washington, 
Lee pressed on into Maryland with the intention of carrying the war into 
the Northern States, and drawing thence ample supplies for his army. 



50 THE Grand army Button. 



The command of the combined armies which were to thwart his phiiis 
and check his progress was again given to McClellan, and although Lee 
captured Harper's Ferry witli but slight resistance, a part of his army and a 
part of iMcClellan's came into collision at South Mountain, and the rebels 
were repulsed and driven over the mountain. Three days later (on the 
17th of September, 1862) the two armies met on the banks of Antietam 
Creek, and after a terrible and bloody battle, in which neither party gained 
a decisive victory, though the advantage was on the Union side, both 
rested through the night on their arms. On the morrow Lee could not 
and McClellan would not renew the battle, and the day following Lee 
moved leisurely toward*i;he Potomac, crossed without any vigorous pur- 
suit, and made his way toward the Rapidan. McClellan remained for some 
weeks in the neighborhood of the Potomac. Wearied at length with his 
indisposition to prosecute the war vigorously, the president relieved him 
of his command on the 7th of November, and appointed General Burn- 
side his successor. He accepted the charge with reluctance, and moved 
forward, though embarrassed from the first by the hesitating obedience of 
his subordinates, toward Fredericksburg, where he proposed to seek and 
attack the rebels. He had not far to seek. The hills which overlook the 
city bristled with batteries, and after crossing the Rappahannock and 
hurling his forces hour after hour against the massive walls which formed 
the rebel defences, with no other effect than to produce a terrible slaughter 
of his troops, he was compelled to withdraw to the north bank of the Rap- 
pahannock. In the West the rebel General Bragg, who had succeeded 
Beauregard in the command of the Western army, after a strenuous effort 
to regain Luka and Corinth, which met with an overwhelming and bloodv 
repulse, moved northward again with the intention of regaining Nashville, 
plundering Kentucky, and perhaps capturing Louisville, which was BuelFs 
base of supplies. Buell followed him, perhaps as rapidly as he was able, 
but never succeeded in overtaking him, or in preventing him from taking 
possession of important towns or plundering at will. He did not, how- 
ever, regain possession of Nashville nor capture Louisville, but after ap- 
proaching that city turned back with a vast train of plunder, and attempted 
to regain his former position in Tennessee. Buell again turned and pur- 
sued him, and at Perryville pressed him so closely as to compel him to 
light, to give time for his trains to move on in safety. The battle was in- 
decisive, and Bragg made his escape without further let or hindrance. 
Dissatisfied with General BuelPs inefficiency, the government removed 
liim from command, and appointed General Rosecrans, who had distin- 
guished himself in the late battle of Corinth, his successor. That gen- 



Review of the War. 51 



eral, making Nashville his headquarters, was prepared in the last days of 
the year to seek Bragg, who had made his headquarters at Murfreesboro, 
and give him battle. The conflict which followed, known as the battle 
of Stone River, was at first a defeat for the Union troops, Bragg massing 
his troops against Rosecrans' right wing, crumpling and crushing it, and 
finally crowding back his centre. But the disaster went no farther; for 
the centre, though pushed back, stemmed the rebel tide and held their 
ground, while the Union commander rallied and reformed his troops in a 
position against which the rebel waves dashed In vain. 

The succeeding day witnessed no very severe fighting, but on the third 
day, when Bragg's right wing, commanded by Breckinridge, attempted to 
repeat the operation of two days before and roll up Rosecrans' left wing, 
they were met by a destruction so sudden and overwhelming that those 
who were left fled in the wildest terror, and ere dawn of the next day 
Bragg and his army had abandoned Murfreesboro. General Sherman, in 
command of two corps of Grant's Army of the Tennessee, had also just 
at the close of the year descended the Mississippi to Vicksburg to attack 
that stronghold from the northwest, while Grant himself approached it 
from the east. The capture of Holly Springs — Grant's depot of sup- 
plies — by the rebels, on the 20th of December, prevented his cooperation, 
though too late to notify Sherman, who proceeded with his attack, but met 
with a severe and mortifying repulse. The condition of the slaves who 
had escaped from their rebel masters had already excited much attention. 
The policy of government had been uniformly to receive them, to employ 
those who were able to labor, and to provide food for those who could not. 
But another question was now agitating the minds of the president, his 
cabinet, and his leading generals. The slaves were an element of great 
strength to the rebels. They could conduct the simple agriculture and 
rude manufactures of the South, and give their masters the opportunity to 
go to the war; and though but few of them became soldiers, they were 
employed in the construction of fortifications, in the drudgery of the 
camp, and in many departments of labor for which in the Northern 
armies enlisted soldiers were detailed. It was well known that the sym- 
pathies of the negroes were wholly with the North, and it was urged with 
great force that, apart from the humanity of the act, the proclamation of 
emancipation of all the slaves in the insurgent States was an act of mili- 
tary necessity, and one which would eflfectually cripple the resources of 
the rebels and hasten the termination of the war. Slowly, perhaps, but 
with great positiveness, had the president arrived at these conclusions ; and 
while he hesitated for some time on account of the border slave States, 



52 THE Grand army Button. 



whom he strongly urged to adopt a system of gradual emancipation, he 
had fully made up his mind to adopt the measure, and had prepared a 
proclamation, indicating his intention, early in the summer of 1862, but 
postponed its publication until it could follow upon the heels of a victorj-. 
On the 22d of September, 1862, he issued his proclamation, announcing 
that on the first day of January, 1863, he should proclaim all the slaves in 
States and parts of States which were then insurgent free, and that he 
pledged the power of the government to effect and maintain their 
freedom. 

The new year (1863) dawned upon the consummation of this act of 
emancipation. It was hailed by the colored race with extravagant joy, 
while the rebels, who saw in it the presage of their downfall, were greatly 
exasperated, and made abundant threats and passed acts of retaliation. The 
year was, however, one of general prosperity to the Union cause. The 
disasters were few and the successes many. Numerous regiments of 
colored troops were enlisted in the service of the Union, and on many 
battle-fields proved their courage and ability.' In the East, after a brief 
period. Hooker succeeded Burnside in command of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, and attempted to turn Lee's left flank at Chancellorsville, sending, 
meantime, a cavalry force to cut his communications. Lee, fullymaster of the 
situation, met Hooker's movement by a counter flank, sending " Stone- 
wall " Jackson to strike and roll up Hooker's right, which he accomplished, 
partly from a want of watchfulness on the part of the Union troops, and 
partly from the panic with which his sudden attack struck a part of the 
Eleventh Corps. The battle raged fiercely that night and the next morning, 
and Hooker's troops were not only forced i:)ack, but crowded northward 
toward the fords of the Rappahannock. Sedgwick's corps, which had 
been ordered to take Fredericksburg, and had accomplished its work after 
a severe battle, pressing westward to join the rest of the army, encountered 
the whole of Lee's army instead, which had passed Hooker, and, while 
his forces lay still in their camps, were fighting all day long with Sedg- 
wick's single corps of brave men. Hooker finally recrossed the Rappahan- 
nock without having accomplished his object, but with heavy losses in 
men and artillery. Lee, emboldened by the supposed demoralization of 
Hooker's army, and not deterred by the ill success of his former inroad 
into the Northern States, started early in June for a new and more ex- 
tensive expedition. Hooker followed and occupied interior lines, crowd- 
ing Lee's army westward b)- means of his cavalry, beyond the Bull Run 
Mountains, and compelling him to cross the Potomac higher up than he 
liked. The last days of June indicated by the approaching columns of 



Review of the War. 53 



the two armies that the great conflict would take place at or near Gettys- 
burg, Penn., and hither the army of the Potomac, under its new com- 
mander. General Meade (General Hooker having been relieved), hastened, 
and for three days battle raged as never before on this continent. The 
Union army, partially defeated the first day, gained and held the strong 
positions of Cemetery Hill, Round Top, and Little Round Top, and re- 
pulsed all the assaults of the enemy with a most fearful slaughter, till at 
last, his best troops slain, some of his ablest generals killed and wounded, 
one-third of his army put hors de co/nbai, and his ammunition nearly ex- 
pended, he began to move for the Potomac. 

Meade's pursuit was not so active and vigilant as it should have been, 
or he might have compelled the surrender of Lee's army ; but he had un- 
doubtedly achieved a great victory. Lee escaped to the Rapidan, and 
thither Meade followed ; and except an unsuccessful attempt of the latter to 
penetrate between the wings of Lee's army in the autumn, there was no 
further movement of the two armies during the year. Charleston must 
be captured ; and while an attack on its outer defences in the summer of 
1862 had proved abortive, and a naval assault under Rear-Admiral Dupont 
in April had been unavailing, the government and the nation were not 
satisfied. General Gilmore, the hero of Fort Pulaski, was put in command 
of the land forces, and Rear- Admiral Dahlgren of the naval force. General 
Gilmore chose Morris Island as the base of his operations. The lower 
portion of the island was occupied ; the strong earthwork. Fort Wagner, 
twice assaulted with fearful loss, and finally captured by siege operations ; 
Fort Sumter bombarded till it was a shapeless mass of ruins ; and Charles- 
ton shelled till its entire lower town became uninhabitable. In the 
Gulf, Galveston had been captured by a portion of Rear-Admiral Farra- 
gut's squadron, only to be held, however, for a few weeks, when by a 
treacherous attack the rebels regained possession, captured the " Harriet 
Lane," and caused the destruction of the " Westfield." In this unfortunate 
affair the gallant Renshaw, Wainwright, Lee, and Zimmerman, officers of 
the United States Navy, sacrificed their lives. On the Mississippi, Gene- 
ral Grant, after trying in vain to capture \^icksburg from the north and 
northwest, sent several of the gunboats, and a number of transports passed 
the batteries in safety, and, marching his troops down the west side of the 
Alississippi, crossed at Bruinsburg, thirty miles below Vicksburg, and, 
moving north-eastward, fought six battles in seventeen days, captured 
Jackson, the capital of the State, and sat down before Vicksburg, which he 
now completely invested, on the i8th of May. After two assaults, neither 
of them productive of much advantage, he proceeded with a regular system 



54 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



of approaches, till the rebels surrendered on the 4th of July. The trophies 
of this victory were thirty-one thousand i^risoners and over four hundred 
guns. Port Hudson, below, was surrendered four days later, and the 
Mississippi flowed untrammelled to the sea. Rosecrans, early in June, had 
commenced moving forward to press Bragg farther south, making Chatta- 
nooga his objective. Driving him from Tullahoma, the advance on 
Chattanooga was necessarily slow, as the railroads and bridges were to be 
reconstructed with a view to permanence, that his supplies from his 
primary and secondary bases — Louisville and Nashville — might be 
safely and rapidly transmitted. It was, as we have said, his intention to 
occupy Chattanooga, but to carry that important point by direct attack 
would have required the sacrifice of more men than he could spare, and 
he accordingly prepared to accomplish it by a movement by the right flank, 
sending his corps d'ar/nee to cross Lookout Mountain at different passes 
miles below Chattanooga, and thus threatening his communications with 
lower Georgia. The expected result followed. Chattanooga was evacu- 
ated, and occupied by a small Union force ; but Bragg, having at this time 
received large reinforcements, resolved to regain that city, and, striking 
Rosecrans before his three corps could unite, to defeat him in detail. 
By great exertion Rosecrans was able to eff'ect a junction of his army 
corps, and in the great battle of Chickamauga, his first day's fighting, 
though severe, was without result. The second day, by an unfortunate 
misunderstanding of an order, a gap was left in thp Union lines, and 
about one-third of the army, including General Rosecrans himself and two 
of the corps commanders, McCook and Crittenden, were swept back and 
were unable to force their way through to the remainder of the army. 
Bragg now supposed he had an easy victory before him, but the sturdy 
Thomas won for himself new honors. Setting his back to the mountains, 
the " Rock of Chickamauga," as he has been appropriately named, fought 
it out with a foe five times his numbers, and when the enemy rolled up 
toward his little army for the last time, hurled upon them Steedman's fresh 
division, and drove them back, defeated and sullen at the loss of their ex- 
pected prey. 

Almost simultaneously with this movement, Burnside had occupied 
KTioxville and captured Cumberland Gap, and Tennessee was again in pos- 
session of the United States. But the possession of Chattanooga was not 
to be maintained without a further struggle. Bragg was still further rein- 
forced, and Hooker, Sherman, Blair, and Howard were sent to reinforce 
the Army of the Cumberland ; Rosecrans was relieved and Thomas put in 
his place, and Grant made the coi/imander of the whole Western Division. 



Review of the War. 55 



Embarrassed at first by the want of supplies, as the rebels held a part of 
the raih-oad and commanded a portion of the river, they were soon re- 
lieved by the manoeuvres of Grant and the battle of Wauhatchie, which 
secured the command of the river. When Bragg finally announced his 
determination to bombard the city, having sent off at the same time 
twenty thousand of his men to besiege Knoxville, Grant replied by send- 
ing Hooker to drive him from Lookout Mountain, and fight that battle 
" above the clouds " which will be famous in history, detaching a cavalry 
force to cut the railroad lines and prevent the return of the men who had 
gone to Knoxville, directing Sherman to demonstrate persistently and 
heavily upon Fort Buckner, while he hurled Gordon Granger's corps upon 
Fort Bragg, and Hooker's upon Fort Breckinridge. Bragg was routed 
with terrible loss of men and guns, and his demoralized army driven be- 
yond Mission Ridge and Pigeon Mountain to the Chattoogata or Rocky- 
Faced Ridge. 

In 1864 new and grander combinations were made for the overthrow of 
the rebellion. Inefficient officers were weeded out from all positions, high 
or low, and the administration exhibited more decidedly than before its 
determination to press the war to a speedy conclusion. Sherman's raid 
into central Mississippi and Alabama, with twenty thousand men, was of 
more value for the terror it carried into the hearts of the rebel population 
than for any other result. The Red River expedition, a miserable and 
disastrous failure, and the battle of Chester, only less miserable and disas- 
trous because fewer troops were engaged, were the last vestiges of the 
" anaconda " system. Henceforth there were but two grand centres of 
military authority, the Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant, General-in- 
Chief, but personally commanding the Division of the East, and Major- 
General Sherman, commanding the Division of the Mississippi ; and these 
two worked together with a perfect unity of purpose. Richmond, or 
rather Lee's army, Atlanta, or Johnston's army, were the objectives of 
each. 

Early in May the grand movements commenced. Grant, with nearly two 
hundred thousand men under his control in the three armies of the Poto- 
mac, the James, and West \'irginia, moved forward in concert toward 
Richmond ; and in a series of battles unequalled in modern history for 
their terrible destruction of human life — battles which will make the 
names of Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Hanover, Court House, Cold Harbor, 
Mechanicsville, and Chickahominy memorable in all the future — drove 
Lee back to Richmond ; then swinging his troops across the James laid 
siege to Petersburg, and by rapid and heavy blows — now upon the de- 



56 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



fences of Richmond, anon upon tlie Weldon Railroad, mining the rebel 
fortifications of Petersburg, throwing his troops across Hatcher's Run to 
break the South side Railroad, sending his cavalry to cut the communica- 
tions of the rebel capital — kept the rebel commander constantly on the 
alert, and held his forces as in a vise at this point. In sheer desperation, 
Lee attempted another expedition, with his irregular and a few regular 
troops, into Maryland and Pennsylvania ; but Early, its commander, 
though he plundered several towns and burned one, soon found his 
master in the fighting cavalry general, Philip Sheridan, whom Grant 
sent to take care of him; defeated at Opequan Creek and "sent whirl- 
ing " through Winchester ; routed from Fisher's Hill and driven in hot 
haste and thorough disorder up the valley, till his men were fain to hide 
in the mountains : and when, reinforced, he again ventured to seek his 
foe, driven back in disgrace ; and when, on a third effort, which promised 
to be successful, he had, in Sheridan's absence, flanked his position and 
driven his army several miles, how completely were the tables turned at 
Sheridan's sudden appearance ! Driven back at full speed twenty-six miles 
in a single night, his cannon left behind, and the line of his flight marked 
at almost every step by the muskets, knapsacks, blankets, and coats his 
men had thrown away, poor Early was glad, henceforth, to keep well out 
of Sheridan's reach. Fierce and bloody battles were not uncommon be- 
tween the two resolute and well-matched antagonists, Lee and Grant ; but 
while the latter often lost the most men, he gained something with each 
battle, and at length drew his lines so closely that the pressure began to 
be intolerable. In January, 1865, Lee apprised Jefferson Davis that without 
some great changes he could not hold out six months longer. After two 
severe battles on the 6th of February and the 25th of March, 1865, the 
final struggle came ; and after a five days' contest, in w'hich a great cavalry 
battle was fought at Dinwiddle Court House, and sharp and severe actions 
near Hatcher's Run, at Five Forks, and around the fortifications of Peters- 
burg, the Southside Railroad was broken, the outer works at Petersburg 
captured, and Petersburg and Richmond evacuated. Six days later, and 
after battles at Deatonsville, Farmville, and Appomattox Station, Lee and 
his army surrendered. 

Sherman's career was more brilliant, though perhaps not more certain 
of eventual success. Leaving Chattanooga on the 7th of May, 1864, and 
moving mostly by the right flank, he drove Johnston successively from 
Dalton, Resaca, Kingston, Dallas, Great and Little Kenesaw Mountains, 
(an assault on the rebel position on the former mountain proving the 
greatest disaster of the campaign), Allatooiia Pass, Marietta, and De- 



Review of the War. 



catur ; and Johnston, havin<; been superseded by Hood, fought three sharp 
battles before Atlanta, in all of which Hood lost very heavily. After besieg- 
ing Atlanta in vain for sometime, he boldly raised the siege, and, moving 
twenty miles below, broke up Hood's communications, fought and de- 
feated two of his army corps at Jonesboro, and compelled the evacuation 
of Atlanta. Taking possession of that city, he sent off the inhabitants 
and accumulated stores there for further movements. Hood attempted 
to cut his communications between Atlanta and Chattanooga, and boasted 
of his intention to regain possession of Tennessee. Sherman followed 
him along the Chattanooga and Atlanta Railroad, fought and repulsed 
him at Allatoona Pass, drove him through Pigeon Mountain and westward 
to Gaylesville, Ala., and then, having assigned two corps of his own army 
to General Thomas and directed other outlying divisions to move toward 
Nashville, he gave him general instructions to take care of Hood, and 
with the four remaining infantry corps and a well-appointed cavalry 
force, turned his face southward, destroyed the railroad from Dalton 
to Atlanta, burned the public storehouses at Atlanta, and on the 14th of 
November, with an army of sixty thousand men, abandoned his base and 
struck out boldly for Savannah, nearly three hundred miles distant. By 
a skilful handling of his troops, now threatening one point and now 
another, he managed to prevent any considerable gathering of the enemy 
in his track, and, with nothing more than a few skirmishes, captured 
]\Iillidgeville, reached the vicinity of Savannah, and carried Fort Mc- 
Allister by assault on the 14th of December. On the 20th Hardee evacu- 
ated Savannah, and Sherman entered it the next day. Meantime Hood, 
tinding that Sherman had moved toward Savannah, left his camp in 
Alabama and marched northward, intent upon again occupying Ten- 
'nessee. General Schofield, who was at Pulaski, had orders to fight him 
moderately and lure him on northward, but to delay his progress till 
General Thomas' reinforcements could come up ; he performed this diffi- 
cult task with extraordinary skill, falling back, fighting all the way from 
Pulaski to Columbia, from Columbia to the north bank of Duck River, 
and thence by a forced march to Franklin. At Franklin a severe battle 
was fought, on the 3d of November; Schofield's army, though greatly 
inferior in numbers, being behind breastworks and inflicting terrible 
punishment on the rebels. In this battle Hood lost thirteen generals. 
Falling back again to Nashville, the rebel general followed, and at- 
tempted to reduce Nashville by besieging it on the side ; but after a fort- 
night General Thomas, sallying forth with his army, crushed one wing of 
Hood's army and drove him back two or three miles the first day, and 



58 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



renewing the attack on the following day routed liim completely, and 
pursuing him relentlessly for two weeks, only ceased when his entire 
army, except a rear-guard of about four thousand, was a demoralized and 
unarmed mob. 

Having thus so completely broken up Hood's fine army that it was no 
longer to be regarded as an organized force. General Thomas increased 
his cavalry force and sent one large division, under General Stoneman, 
eastward into southwestern Virginia and North Carolina ; three divisions 
or about fifteen thousand mounted men southward, under General Wilson, 
into Alabama and Georgia ; one corps of infantry to Mobile : and another 
eastward to Wilmington. General Sherman remained about one month 
in Savannah and its vicinity, and then moved forward on the third stage 
of the " great march.'' 

His objective this time was Goldsboro. N.C. more than four hundred 
miles distant. His army, marching in two columns and veiled on 
either wing by Kilpatrick's cavalry, cut a swarth of forty miles in width 
through the heart of South and North Carolina, taking possession of 
Orangeburg, Columbia, Winnsboro, Cheraw, Fayetteville, and Goldsboro, 
and compelling the rebels to evacuate Charleston, which General Gilmore 
entered on the i8th of February, and other important points on the sea- 
board. In all this route he fought but two battles, one at Averysboro, the 
other at Bentonville, N.C, in both of which he defeated Johnston. 
Arrived at Goldsboro, he remained there for a little more than two weeks 
refitting his army. On the 19th of June, 1864, off Cherbourg, France, 
occurred a naval battle between the United States sloop of war " Kear- 
sage,'' Captain Winslow, and the Anglo-rebel privateer, the " Alabama,"' 
which for two years had committed terrible ravages among the merchant 
vessels of the United States. The commander of the " Alabama " was the 
challenger ; but after a severe fight of about an hour, the " Alabama " was 
compelled to surrender, and sunk soon after; about thirty of her crew 
were drowned, about seventy were picked up by the boats of the " Kear- 
sage," and the remainder, including the rebel commander, were' rescued by 
the " Deerhound,'" an English yacht which seemed to act as tender for the 
" Alabama," and most dishonorably carried them to the English shore and 
.set them at liberty. 

General Grant, desirous of checking the blockade-running and of 
crippling Lee's resources, had sent in December a joint land and naval 
force to reduce Fort Fisher, a strong earthwork commanding the entrance 
to Wilmington harbor. The first expedition had proved a failure, but a 
second had been promptly fitted out, — the land forces under General 



Review of the War. 5y 



Terry, the naval as before under Rear- Admiral Porter, — and after a most 
desperate and persistent assault of six hours tlie fort was captured and the 
works adjacent surrendered. After a brief period of rest General Terry 
moved forward to carry the other forts and batteries defending the harbor, 
and General Schofield and his corps were brought from Nashville to assist 
in the work. On the 21st of February, Wilmington was evacuated after 
some hard fighting, and on the 22d it was occupied by Schofield's and 
Terry's troops. These two corps now moved forward through Kinston, 
where they had a severe battle, to Goldsboro, to join Sherman. On the 
loth of April Sherman again moved on with his army in pursuit of 
Johnston, driving him from Southfield on the nth and from Raleigh on 
the 13th. Here the news of Lee's surrender reached them, and the Union 
troops pushed forward with new ardor to conquer Johnston's army also. 
General Johnston, seeing escape to be hopeless, now made overtures for 
surrender, but desired somewhat different terms from those accorded to 
Lee, and proposed to surrender the entire rebel armies in the field. A 
memorandum was drawn up by Johnston and Sherman and sent to 
Washington for sanction, but was unanimously disapproved by the presi- 
dent and cabinet. General Grant concurring. The lieutenant-general 
carried the intelligence of its rejection to General Sherman, and within 
twenty-four hours General Johnston desired another interview and sur- 
rendered on the same terms accorded to General Lee. 

The assassination of the president, which occurred on the 14th of 
April, did not, as it was feared it might, delay the approach of peace ; for 
the hopelessness of the struggle being apparent, the rebel commanders 
were everywhere ready to lay down their arms. On the 5th of August, 
1864, the Forts Morgan, Powell, and Gaines, at the entrance to Mobile 
harbor, had been attacked by a combined force under General Canby and 
Rear-Admiral Farragut, and after a desperate naval battle in which the 
iron-clad ram " Tennessee," the chcf-d^cBuvre of the rebel armored ships, 
was captured and two others of their gunboats destroyed, the forts were 
one after another reduced, till on the 23d of August the last surrendered. 
Other operations, and the necessity for the employment of troops else- 
where, delayed the siege of the city of Mobile until March, 1865, when, a 
substantial force having been assembled on the coast, a combined naval 
and land attack was made, and the formidable defences of the city were 
carried one after another, and the city surrendered on the nth of April. 
The hundreds of torpedoes with which the bay was planted caused the 
destruction of two iron-clads and four other vessels of the United States 
Navy. 



tio The grand army button. 



The surrender of iMol^ile was soon followed by the surrender of General 
Dick Taylor and his army, on the same terms which had been accorded to 
Lee and Johnston, and the giving up of the rebel navy on the waters of 
Alabama. General Wilson, with his magnificent cavalry corps, had swept 
through central Alabama and Georgia, capturing Selma, Montgomery, 
West Point, Columbus, and Macon ; and Stoneman, moving eastward 
from Knoxville, had reached Salisbury, infamous as one of the prison-pens 
of our brave soldiers ; and the two cavalry generals were now moving 
toward each, other in search of the fugitive rebel, President Jefferson Davis. 
A detachment of Wilson's corps arrested him on the loth of May, 1865, 
at Irwinville, Georgia, in the act of attompfing to escape in feminine garb. 
The arch traitor in custody, there remained no more rebels in arms except 
Kirby Smith's force in Texas, which also surrendered on the 26th of May. 

Thus ended the rebellion and the war for the restoration of the Union. 
It had cost more than half a million of lives, and in the debts of the two 
sections and the destruction of property and values not less than eight 
thousand millions of money; but fearful as its expense had been, it is 
worth all it has cost. Slavery has been destroyed, the State Rights 
heresy effectually overthrown, and the power of the nation to maintain its 
integrity in spite of domestic treason or foreign interference fully demon- 
stated. Henceforth we are one people — one in purpose and aim, one in 
our hopes for the present and our aspirations for the future. There may 
and will be jealousies and prejudices to be overcome ; bitterness will rankle 
in some hearts perhaps during the lifetime of the present generation ; but 
henceforth the banner of the free shall fioat over an undivided, free, happy, 
and prosperous land ; and the vast resources, still but half developed, 
which will draw to our shores in rapidly increasing numbers the oppressed 
of all nations, will soon lighten our burdens, and cause the war to be re- 
membered only for the patriotism it developed and the blessings it has 
secured to us« 



LIBBY PRISON. 61 



LIBBY PRISON. 



BY COMRADE NELSON MONROE. 



FROM the corner of a dingy brick building in one of the streets of 
Richmond, Va., there could have been seen, at the breaking out of 
the rebellion in 1861, a small sign, which told to the passer-by that 
*' Libby & Son, Ship Chandlers and Grocers," had invited their patrons to 
this point, as the one where their business was conducted, and where those 
must repair who were interested in bargains particularly associated with 
their vocation. It was not of sufficient importance in time of peace to 
obtain a wide celebrity, neither were the owners thereof so distinguished 
as to be of great notoriety ; but as the inauguration of war has inducted 
many into office who were hitherto obscure and unknown, so the contin- 
gencies of our civil strife have opened this place to the public gaze and 
made it famous, or rather ?«famous, before the world, beside conferring a 
lustreless fame ujjon the proprietors. The very name of Libby has become 
synonymous with that of terror ; it carries tyranny and oppression in its 
simple sound. The soldier who is taken prisoner in Virginia vales is at 
once haunted with visions of this darksome den, and shrinks from enter- 
ing a place so full of bitter experiences as that is known to be. 

Fierce hate and revenge reigned supreme there, and consequently 
there was wrought out a system of discipline which produced a condition 
such as we might expect when the discordant elements of being rage tin- 
checked ; and we are not surprised to find the culmination reached in 
almost fiendish expression. Thousands who have been in Libby Prison 
will rehearse the story of their misery, want, and woe to others ; these 
will pass them along to other listeners still, so that the echo will scarcely 
die out at the remotest period of the present generation. Households, in 
coming time, will gather about the fireside and talk of their friends and 
ancestors who ended their days in so much wretchedness because of their 
attachment to the Union, and in proportion as their bravery and heroism, 



62 THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



their courage and constancy, are admired will the malice and fury of their 
persecutors be condemned. 

It may be, and probably is, one of the essentials of war that jjlaces be 
provided for the confinement of prisoners ; but they do not necessarily in- 
clude every species of torment which the human mind is capable of con- 
ceiving. They should not naturally presuppose the absence of all 
humanity and the annihilation of every condition of comfortable exist- 
ence, as they have seemed to in almost every part of the South where 
the Confederate authorities existed. 

Their treatment of prisoners was very al)usive, kicking them, and never 
speaking of one only in the most opprobrious terms. 

The nights were very cold, and, there being nothing but gratings in the 
windows, the men were obliged to walk all night long to keep from freezing, 
and if they could meet the friendly embrace of slumber at all, it was dur- 
ing the day, when the sun would shed its kindly beams upon them, and so 
imparting sufficient warmth to their bodies to keep them from shivering. 

You have no idea of their utter destitution when you listen to the state- 
ment they make respecting the manner of their obtaining the food which 
they must have in some way or perish. 

I have seen men draw their bean-soup in their s^oes for the want of a cuji, 
plate, or anything of the kind to put it in. And what seemed worse than all 
the rest was the almost satanic rule that if a man was caught resting his 
eye upon the glad scenes of nature through a window he must be quickly 
translated from earth by the ball of a musket. The whole thing is arbi- 
trary in the extreme ; but we could expect little else under the very shadow 
of the Confederate capitol, where the original framers of secession go in 
and out, seeking to form a dynasty, though it be founded in the tears and 
blood, the cries and groans, of their fellow-men. Of the numbers who 
have been admitted within the walls of the Libby Building we can scarcely 
speak, for the multitudes have been conveyed thither temporarily, to remain 
only until such time as they could be transported to other places. Very 
many thousands have found a transient home here, and their united testi- 
mony is the same. 

It was three stories high, and eighty feet in width, and a hundred and 
ten feet in depth. In front, the first story was on a level with the street, 
allowing space for a tier of dungeons under the sidewalk; but in the rear 
the land sloped away till the basement floor rose above the ground. Its 
unpaintcd walls were scorched to a rusty brown, and its sunken doors and 
low windows, filled here and there with a dusky pane, were cobwebbed 
and weather-stained, giving the whole building a most uninviting and 
desolate appearance. 








«t;~4< 



ry.-^ r:^- 



frfcr I" 





5-^^^. 









1%^ sm. ^^>*e I 



l^*flBI 11 



/'? 



O vo 




•s^^i* ^'C*^ 




64 ' Thh Grand army Button. 



Upon passing inside, we entered a room about forty feet wide and a 
hundred feet deep, witii bare brick walls, a rough plank floor, and narrow, 
dingy windows, to whose sash only a few broken panes were clinging. A 
row of tin wash-basins, and a wooden trough, which served as a bathing- 
tub, were at one end of it, and a half-do/cn cheap stools and hard-bot- 
tomed chairs were littered about the floor, but it had no other furniture ; 
and this room, with five others of similar size and appointments, and two 
basements floored with earth and filled with debris, composed the famous 
Libby Prison, in which for months together thousands of the best and 
bravest men that ever went into battle have been allowed to rot and to 
starve. 

From the time the war began, twelve and sometimes thirteen hundred 
of our officers and men were hived within those half-dozen desolate rooms 
and filthy cellars, with a space of only ten feet by two allotted to each for 
all the purposes of living. 

Overrun with vermin, perishing with cold, breathing a stifled, tainted 
atmosphere, no space allowed them for rest by day, and lying down at 
night "wormed and dovetailed together like fish in a basket," their daily 
rations only two ounces of stale beef and a small lump of hard corn-bread, 
and their lives the forfeit if they caught but one streak of God's blue sky 
through those filthy windows,* — they have endured all these horrors in 
the middle passage. My soul sickened as I looked upon the scene of their 
wretchedness. If the liberty we were fighting for were not worth even so 
terrible a price, if it were not cheaply i)urchased even with the blood 
and agony of the many brave and true souls who have gone into that foul 
den only to die or to come out the shadows of men, — living ghosts, con- 
demned to walk the night and to tade away before the breaking of the 
great day that is coming, — 'Who would not cry out for peace, for peace on 
any terms ? 

We need no other proof of the true nobleness of soul in the young 
men of our country than the voices wiiich come ever and anon from these 
forbidding prison-places, telling us of a quenchless love for the cause of 
right ; of a devotion and fervor that know no abatement, and a willingness 
to do and to dare, to suffer and to die, that the tyrant of oj^pression may 
be crushed, and the glad hosannas of Freedom ring through the land and 
reverberate among the hills; that we may have not a "circle within a cir- 
cle," but one that is continuous, unbroken, clasping in its mighty embrace 
a free, happy, and united people. 



• See poem, *' ' The Dead Line ' at Libby Prison." 



"The Dead Line" at Libby Prison. 65 



"THE DEAD LINE" AT LIBBY PRISON, 



FROM his box the rebel soldier watched his sad and weary foe, 
While the noon in solemn silence seemed unwilling far to go, 
As if it did wish to whisper to the sad and weary there. 
How it smiled o"er Western prairies and New England valleys fair ; 
And the starving son looked on it, and the weeping mother too, 
One at home and one in prison, but their hearts together drew. 
And the pining husband saw it, and his fond and loving wife, 
One looked from her chamber sleepless, one was trying to hold life. 
Oh ! the moon was brightly beaming, as it on its way did roam. 
And it lit the soldier's prison and it lit his far-off home. 
Wife and mother asked beneath it, Where's my husband and my boy? 
Months have passed since I heard from them, and shall time my hopes 

destroy ? 
Son and husband asked beneath it, Where"s the mother and the wife ? 
Do they know how now I suffer, how Tm loth to part with life? 
Do they know the peril of it, if we leave the heated clime. 
And without a moment's warning put our feet on the Dead Line? 

Distant friend, how we have suffered for the want of food and clothes, 
How we've daily pined with hunger, but the God of Heaven knows, 
And how we have had no shelter from the sun and from the storm. 
Ah ! it sent to yonder graveyard many a once stout, noble form. 
Ah ! we've seen the light of hoping leaving many a once bright eye. 
And we've seen the strong and robust turn to skeletons and die, 
And we knew why they were numbered with the cold and silent dead 
Was because they had no shelter, and ate filth instead of bread ; 
And we heard how distant fond ones, from the golden State of Maine. 
Sent us blankets to wrap round us, sent us food life to sustain. 
But the minions of Jeff Davis robbed the starving prisoners there, 
While their chivalry they boasted, and their leader formed a prayer. 
'Twas a prayer for aid from Heaven on the traitors' cherished plans> 
As if God himself could sanction all the ways they murdered man. 
As if He could look with favor on the fiends who there combine 
To cause famine and exposure to force some to the Dead Line. 



6G THE GRAND ARMY BUTTON. 



And why should the traitor soldier be too cautious ere he fires? 

And why should he loudly challenge, when so glowing his desires? 

And why would he not aim steady wlien he gets a leader's praise, 

And if thus he shoots a Yankee, has a furlougli thirty days? 

Other nights they may be dismal, and the line may pass from view ; 

Still the bloodhounds, trained to watching, eye the weak and helpless too ; 

And the sentinels are knowing that his food has made him so, 

That his stomach is disordered, and his face portrays his woe ; 

And for him tliey have no pity, for their hearts like rivers freeze, 

Though he suffers from starvation and the inroads of disease. 

Still the glimmering hope is cherished, 'mid the many dangers there. 

That again he may be knowing a fond wife or mother's care. 

And he jjonders as he wanders, Nature does assert its right. 

And each sentinel well knoweth the poor prisoner's dreadful plight. 

But, oh! nothing say unto him, from him hide not the marked place. 

For you'll never get a furlough, if you warn him from the line. 

Hark! There is a scream of terror, traitor minions heed it not, 

For it's not of much importance, but a Yankee soldier's shot. 

Not a fence was there to warn him, and the marks were hard to see, 

But a '• Reb " has got a furlough and a prisoner's soul set free. 

There's another squad of Yankees waiting and watching there. 

How we wish when we are guarding some would try to cross tlie line. 

'Tis a wonder they don't try it when they have to suffer so ; 

And it is our leader's study how to starve or freeze each foe. 

So that he may ne'er be useful in the foeman's ranks again ; 

And the pale and tottering " Yankees " tell the hope is not in vain ; 

While they from their Northern prisons stouter send our prisoners back, 

With no crushed hopes in their bosoms and no bloodhounds on their track ; 

And to keep their hard-earned money they did not in vain beseech, 

Nor when wishing for an apple pay a dollar bill for each ; 

And no Federal iiad a furlough to make hopes the brighter shine. 

Till he shot a helpless foeman full five feet from the Dead Line. 

Who'll forget the rude old wagons in which they our dead conveyed, 
And the loathsome, shabby manner in which our brothers there were laid? 
Who'll forget the same rude wagons, in which ihe) conveyed our dead. 
After served another purpose — that of bringing us our bread. 
That of bringing us our " corn-cob," which they cruelly called meal, 
While the life-blood from the soldiers it would like a robber steal? 



The Dead Line" at Libby Prison. 67 



Who'll forget the putrid " beef-steaks," twenty men on one to dine, 

Peas in wliich huge worms were gathered as if drawn in battle line? 

Who'll forget the black swamp-water and the crocodiles near by? 

Who'll forget the chains so heavy in which foes let prisoners die? 

Who'll forget the smoky pine-fires round which clustered " heart-sick 
bands, 

Speaking of the friends they treasured, while they looked like " contra- 
bands " ? 

Who'll forget the rampant villains saying we deserved our lot. 

And the " unknown " who were buried in the trench — a fearful spot? 

Who'll forget the countless horrors — there's no book the tenth could tell, 

For Libby Trison nothing lacketh to make it the Earthly Hell. 

See the graveyard yonder swelling with the prisoners paroled. 
Let us trust their noble spirits have gone to their Saviour's fold. 
Ah ! how many forms were murdered in a cold and shocking way — 
Can their treatment be forgotten while our souls are in this clay? 
It needs something more than human to forget what brave men bore. 
To forget the graveyard swelling and the hearts that suffered sore, 
To forget the noble comrades who did perish midst our foes. 
For the want of food and shelter, while the rebels stole their clothes. 
To forget the horrid treatment mortal man must feel to know. 
There's no human comprehension that can realize the woe ; 
But \)e tried as foes have tried us, fearing that we would surviye, 
And you wonder that a mortal left that Earthly Hell alive. 
There were many, many spirits left Libby Prison and took flight. 
As if they had wings of angels, to the land of life and light ; 
Many who were often longing they could leave the accursed place. 
And the angels bade them welcome, far outside of the Dead Line. 

And now, comrades, this is what we have done ; and thirty years have 
passed and gone. 

Our friendship with each other, in Fraternity, Charity, and Loyalty, has 
with those years stronger grown ; and as we look back upon the past, and 
tiiink of our comrades who have answered the final roll-call we won- 
der why it was not our fate to be called from that Earthly Hell (Libby 
Prison). Who can answer? But, comrades, as we have been spared this, 
the Grand Army Button, to wear, let us wear it as a " Souvenir" (as it 
is), in remembrance of the past, and thank God that we did not approach 
too near the Dead Line. 






lillii 




;;i;i:;;iSi;|,g|!:;'!';;.':!v 



;--j^.^;v;«Ji,:;:i, >•;, 






W" 




iipgi 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 673 436 2 p 



